/ 1 





Annals of the Glen 



BY — 



WILFRID J, DORWARD, 



^ 



^'> :.^3 t^ 



O Torest Glen ! O haunt of the AAuses nine ! 
O treasury of labor and of rest ! 
Mow much thou hold 'st within thy breast ! 
Mow much thou say 'st to mine! 



M 



The library of 
congress, 

Two CoHi£3 ReoeivED 

NOV. 26 19011 

COPVRIQHT ENTRV 

CLASS a^XXc Wo. 

COPY a. 



Copyright 

JOHN T. DURWARD 

1901 

[All rights reserved] 



S 3.1)7 



'cc cc c c 



PREFACE. 

The ever-increasing number of visitors to Dnrward's 
Glen seems to make neeessary a souvenir volume, that they 
may earry azvay sometJiing-^of its beauty and romance, even 
as the stroller by the sea shore possesses himself of a little 
of its music in the hollow rainbozv-tinted shell. 

It is zvell, too, that before they are forgotten the inci- 
dents of pioneer days be recorded, and the fast-departing 
Fauna be remembered, and the Flora of to-day be described 
for to-morroiv. Most of tlw illustrations are pictures en- 
graved for the first time; the tJiougJrt having gaiiu^d recog- 
nition that the zvork of the Artist Brother should not be sel- 
fishly hidden, but that beauty, like charity, should be diffusive. 
We send them on beauty's mission. 

The Glen: March /, i^oi. 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN.* 



"KxowEST Thou the Land." 

"AuLD Geordie." 

Uphill Beginnings. 

Spring Visitors at The Glen. 

A Hardwood Romance. 

The Bird Chqir. 

A Well-traveled Thoroughfare. 

The Artist Brother. 

Reclaimed for a Season. 

Winter at The Glen. 

The Vanishing Game. 

Surcease ahd Survival. 

Postscript. 



*DuiiWARD's Glen, Caledonia, Columbia County, Wisconsin. 




IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 



KNOWnST THOU THE LAND." 



It is known of a few favored ones, ones that have 
grown weary, or indignant, or terrified at the awful and 
increasing celerity of the mad rush on life's dusty high- 
way, 

"And hitherward they turn with uplift faces, 

Longing to rest them" in its cool leafy solitudes and 
sweet silences. Would'st thou too know of it? 

Journey with me to a spot well within that great 
bend or elbow of the Wisconsin river w^here it approaches 
to almost within hailing distance of the waters of the 
Fox, boimd in an opposite direction, and then abruptly 
veers to the right. A fertile valley fifteen miles in length 
runs parallel to the river, terminating in a prairie at the 
south end and a marsh at the north. Midway, a shel- 
tered vale, perhaps a mile long, nestles in the embrace 
of the hills. Long ages ago it was spanned at its nar- 
rowest part by a dam of Nature's masonry, that confined 
a limpid lake of cold spring w^ater in the recesses of the 
forest, there to slake the thirst of the deer, and mirror 
the beauties of the earth and sky. These w^aters finally 
cut their way through the rocky barrier to freedom and 
the Gulf, leaving us a babbling trout stream fed by 
springs, and the deep rocky gateway or gorge fringed 
with pines, through which it passes. On still days the 
ear can faintly catch the labored panting of the C. & N. 
W. locomotives as they slowly drag their freightage 
around the "Devil's Nose" and through between the 



6 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

■quartzite walls that encircle "Devil's Lake," and this witii 
the far off whistle of the railroad shops at JJaraboo, is 
all the outside din of traffic that we hear. Inside the 
Valley a small city of white-walled cottages — a city ruled 
by Queens, and filled with thousands of busy workers — 
give out a pleasant hum by day ; and the ceaseless plash 
of the house spring, in its marble basin, breaks the 
hushed stillness of the night. All around a luxuriant 
vegetation blossoms and runs riot, and the birds hold 
high carnival through a season of six moons. Here 
the naturalist or artist can pass a summer up to his eyes 
in delectable study, his ears filled with bird melody, his 
feet irresistibly drawai along the shady path in:o the 
teeming solitude. But remember, this is only true after 
"Jack Frost" and suite have gone north for the benefit 
of their health. Let us not now think of the winter. 

To be more explicit and prosaic, the ''Glen" of these 
annals is a forty acre patch of woodland, meadowland, 
and marshland, with rocks and streams and plant and 
tree grow^ths innumerable. It finally became the per- 
manent home of m}^ parents, when they were something 
past middle age, but we had previously lived there when 
I was quite young. So its scenery was largely instru- 
mental in forming and directing my love of the beauti- 
ful in nature, and as the books and pictures scattered 
in prodigal profusion over the house as readily encour- 
aged a taste for literature and art, I naturally devote the 
first labors of my pen to the recording of its simple 
legends and memories, and as a sort of unofficial guide 
book to its by-ways and woodpaths. 

It were in vain to look for any sequence in these 
sketches themselves — this was thought of but was con- 
sidered inevitable — but the connection between each 
individual sketch and the glen w^ill. I hope, be apparent; 




COTTAGE AND GALLERY 



KNOWEST THOU THE LAND. 7 

and in justification of this feeling I may remark, that 
all the photographs for the illustrations were taken by 
me on the place and expressly for the work. The glen 
changes so fast — the forces of vegetation and decay, and 
the ceaseless wearing of the waters are transforming it 
while yet I describe it — that the pictorial record though 
true to-day may be lacking to-morrow ; but it may be 
all the more precious for that in the days to come. And 
we all look forward ; we must, even if we would not. 
It is the only way to face in battle, it is the best vision 
in life. And yet, too, who is there that does not some- 
times give one "lingering look behind ?" Let us in these 
papers look forward and backward ; yet also dwell on 
whatever is beautiful and of good report beside us in 
the vision of to-day. 




AULD GEORDIE." 



^'Maii, there a shoogar maple !" 

The speaker was one of two men, both somew^hat 
gray, and both counting the "land o' cakes" as their 
birthplace, that w^ere sauntering up the little valley 
leading from the Caledonia mill to the eastern boundary 
of Sauk Co., and he had stopped for the hundreth time 
to admire or criticise some natural object, in a spirit of 
perfect frankness, and, let it be said, of strongest con- 
viction. His rather negligent dress was dusty-white with 
toll from many grists, his hands were thrust part w'ay 
into rather inadequate breeches pockets, and he walked 
\ery erect, only inclining his head slightly to glance 
dowai at the foot of the sapling under inspection, and 
quickly poising it again on his broad shoulders at the 
accustomed angle, as his eye roved up the trunk to 
the topmost twig. The critical and at times petulant 
remarks bestowed on the mill race they were following 
up, proclaimed him the miller, even without the testi- 
mony of his dusty hat, coat and shoes. 

His companion was a smaller man — perhaps a little 
below the medium height — and though he impressed you 
with the uprightness of his bearing, there was no con- 
scious effort to look up in the faces of his taller neigh- 
bors, which so often renders a little man, especially if 
he happens to be stout, so irresistibly comical. His 
dress was unobtrusive — rather dark than light — and 
faintly sug^ jested the city as his usual residence, which 




THE GLEN— AULD GEORDIE'S. 



AULD GEORDIE. g 

was true enough. He was thinking of changing the 
town for the country, however, and the miher was his 
guide to a romantic property situated half a mile higher 
up on the stream that supplied the mill. Midway of 
their journey lay the mill pond, the dam partly spanning 
the valley at its throat not much larger than a good 
sized beaver embankment, but perhaps large enough if 
it were not for the sudden freshets, and the constant 
burrowing of the muskrats. Above and to the west of 
it stretched forty acres of land almost ready for the 
plough, covered with hazel brush to the south where 
the ground was lowest, and with small oak, poplar and 
hickory to the north. A few patriarchal white oaks, 
and at least one tall sugar maple, rising high above the 
underbrush, live in the memory of that time. It is now 
all cleared, all except one fine shagbark hickory, that 
still tempts some venturesome squirrels from the woody 
blufif to the south of the mill stream, in nut time. 

The adjoining property to the west is the destina- 
tion of the travelers, and as they round the gentle spur 
of a hill on their right, they find that the stream is again 
with them ; slipping, gurgling and murmuring along 
the border of a small marsh, at the head of which is 
the rocky glen, narrow at the mouth and fringed on 
one side with white pines, that constitutes the romance 
and attraction of the place. Hard by its mouth and 
almost edging the stream stood a tiny two-room habita- 
tion, and in the side of the hill conveniently close to 
it, the semi-dugout workshop of its tenant and owner. 
Nobody was to be seen as the miller and his friend 
approached, and the former volunteered the information 
that "Geordie's tremendious hard o' the hearin' ; Kirsten 
tapped the door one day enough til wake the dead, and 
Geordie worked through it a'." 



lO ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

The house was duly assailed with knuckles and voice, 
but was as deaf as its absent master. A search around 
about discovered him stooping down at the stream \\^asn- 
ing some wheat. With many grunts he straighteue'.l u'p 
to a good six feet — and then was bent like a bow — and 
he invited them in. He had to stoop still more to enter 
his own doorway to the "leanto," yet the door opened 
even with the eaves. This part of the house was of lum- 
ber, but the main room or building — the "ben" — was 
built of oak logs. The city-bred man noticed with sur- 
prise that the hermit had been reading Gibbons' "Decline 
and Fall," but though he seemed a great reader, his 
memory was poor ; and on allusion being made to Gold- 
smith's masterpiece, he replied, 

''The Vicar o' Wackfield, Oh aye, Smollet wrote 
that." 

After a while he proposed to show them the glen, 
and they passed out at the side door next the shop, 
past a clump of basswoods guarding the entrance, and 
then the cool suck of air from the springs, and the rocks, 
and the deep shade was felt in their faces, and they 
stood in fairyland. At their feet lingered the stream, 
flecked with stray sunbeams that filtered through the 
branches overhead ; full of wonderful brown, and gray, 
and leafy reflections from the rocks and ferns ; leisurely 
spread out over the shallows, gamboling over the peb- 
bles and boulders, edging under the overhanging sand- 
stone clififs with their adamantine substratum of con- 
glomerate, throwing up against the rocks in quaint 
reflection, the trembling golden-shimmer of its ripples 
and undercurrents. The eye travels upward to the rocks 
— a seventy foot wall ; the pines — a hundred feet more ; 
and — and then the blue. This is on the right side as 
you go in; on the other — more sloping, but still pre- 



AULD GEORDI. II 

cipitous — what plant of our woods I wonder does not 
grow there! Father John "botanized" over 300! In 
earhest spring the purple, and white, and rose-tinted 
hcpaticas and th- saugiiiuaria, later the trillium, the 
columbine, the shooting-star, the man-in-the-pulpit, and 
the Dutchman's breeches; all the ferns and mosses; 
and a bewildering miscellaneous green crop, or succes- 
sion of crops, that only a skillful botanist could classify ; 
and even he, if pastured out with but twelve yards of 
line, would be long in reaching the end of his tether. 

Turning from inanimate to animate nature, yonder 
broods a pewee on its mud-moss nest, perched on a ledge 
beneath the overhanging clifT; the water thrush dashes 
along the bed of the stream with waggling tail and elfin 
song ; the king-fisher has a nesting-hole in the sand bank 
where the sheer, rock-wall of the glen ends; and the 
tiny ruby throat or his plain throated mate has two tiny 
white eggs no bigger than peas, in a nest made of 
lichens and gossamers, hidden away somewhere over- 
head. 

But our party is almost out of sight, I must follow 
them. 

I do not know whether they advanced so far that 
the rocks on the right were left behind and the "weeping 
ledge" (a dripping, moss-covered projection above the 
stream on the left) was reached, whether they caught 
sight of the picturesque overshot wheel of a primitive 
shingle mill on the last lynn, whether they were silent 
as the rocks or garrulous as the stream ; but they finally 
returned to the cabin, and the city-bred stranger asked 
the beetle-browed hermit if he would sell. Old George 
said, ''No," but, doubtless to temper its abrupt finality, 
continued by saying that he had been "a hewer of wood 
and a drawer of water" for relations since he was a boy, 



12 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

but that here he "could Hve in independence." And so 
they left him to his soaked wheat and soHtude, the mill.;;/ 
returning to his mill, the strang-er to his city toil and 
cares. 



But the leaven of a new idea had been successfully 
hid in "Auld Geordie's" mind, and the more he turned 
it over the more his hopes and schemes (who is without 
them) expanded. If he could only retain six acres, the 
rest would still be his to look at, and with the price of 
the balance he could build a fine new house, he would 
not need to work so hard, he could have doctors treat 
his eyes and ears, he could almost be young again. Per- 
haps he might marry, who knows. The kindly miller 
forwarded the redecision to his friend of the town, and 
a bargain was struck. 

Thus it came to pass that a family of seven persons 
— the children all boys or young men — found a home 
in the log house on the stream level ; and the two young- 
est soon grasped wild nature with both hands, and thrust 
their bare feet into her, getting mired in the marsh and 
wet in the brook as healthy children will, to their own 
infinite satisfaction, and ]\Iamma"s more or less indul- 
gent disapproval. They pried into the secrets of plant- 
ing and reaping, made their first garden on a warm, 
sandy bank where the cutleaved violets and the snake- 
weed blossomed as "true blue" as ultramarine and sky- 
tint could make them; dug up their seed beans every 
day to see if they were ever going to sprout, and then 
pulled up as weeds the few that did manage to get above 
ground ; gathered nut-galls and thorn-apples, June ber- 
ries, oak-apples, blood-root (for decorative purposes 
Indian fashion) and all the time became more leaf-wise 
and bird-wise as the lone siunmer davs went bv. 




THE GLEN— LOOKING OUT. 



AULD GEORDIE. 



13 



Across this vision of wood and stream unfoldine to 
the youngsters' eyes, passed at uncertain intervals the 
bowed form of the hermit. He hngered on the out- 
skirts of their httle playday world, regarded with awe 
when actually seen, yet dropping out of remembrance 
when removed from sight. To be sure his brand-new 
frame house was only a rifle shot awav, but the voune- 
sters rather shunned it except when sent there on an 
infrequent errand. What attraction could an old man 
and his empty house have for children with nature's 
exhaustless picture book of trees and flowers unfoldine 
its leaves on every side? x\nd then their baby sister 
came; that widened their experience and mental out- 
look, while it narrowed and circumscribed their roving 
fancy. The first year baby was to be viewed with wonder 
and much speculation. Xext year the little toddler's 
steps must be accompanied and guarded; the brook, 
the patch of rhus toxicodendron, tlie quaking bog, the 
precipitous brink, the doubtful wild berry, all must be 
given a wide berth. This all leaves "Old Meah" as the 
children called him, mostly to himself. 

Old Mearns was not like his friend the miller, he 
would not argue a point. The man who too minutely 
explained just how he wanted a certain piece of work 
done, was likely to be curtly advised to go elsewhere, 
and any expostulation would be received in preoccupied 
silence, while George busied himself at something else. 
He was deaf to all further discussion, once he had said 
"No" to any project, and would deign no further notice. 
It was even this way with his friends, for once his anti- 
pathies were aroused he was simply unapproachable, 
first or last. Two of those who had unluckily incurred 
his dislike but were unaware of it, asked leave to sharpen 
their axes on his grindstone. Those times, be it remem- 



14 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

bered, the blacksmith was usually the possessor ot tlic 
only grindstone in the neighborhood, and by a custom 
born of necessity, all used it ; though permission was 
always asked, and usually granted, with the greatest 
good will. George either took no notice of the request 
or silently motioned them to the stone, I forget which, 
but certainly did not supply the very necessary informa- 
tion that as the machine was a home-made one of "free- 
stone," no water should be used. He quietly allowed 
them to dip water from the stream near by and apply it 
and their axes to the stone ; and when it crumbled down 
under the treatment, he remarked in caustic triumph, 

"You've done for it noo." 

Thus, though he was anything but a malicious man, 
he suffered the loss of his laboriously made grindstone, 
to have the strange satisfaction of letting two young 
men that he thought were ''fules" confound themselves. 
His charges for work — though he tolerated no ''dicker- 
ing" or "haggling" — were very modest, and his honesty 
was never questioned ; indeed he never raised his prices 
to correspond with the inflation caused by the Civil War. 
I would be tempted to think he never knew that prices 
had gone up, except that he put himself on record as to 
the advanced price of calico. Two of the boys saw inm 
acting strangely, and on running up, found a smoulder- 
ing spot of fire on his person which he smelt, but was 
unable to find, as his eyesight was now failing rapidly. 
After the fire was extinguished, surveying his nondescript 
and much bepatched clothes, no single piece of which 
showed its original color, he gravely remarked : 

'Tt'le no doo to loss cotton, its very dear the noo." 

He had, in common with most solitary persons, a 
great faculty of making all his appliances and not depend- 
ing on the labor of other men. The shakes on the roof 



AULD GEORDIE. I 5 

of the log cottage, the large-headed wroiiglit-iron nails 
that studded its doors, were all the result of his own 
patient industry, and he rather scorned to buy anything 
he could make, though at twice the cost. In addition 
to making his own shingles, and grindstone, and rat- 
trap, and nails, he made his own charcoal as well. Our 
youngsters looked with considerable interest on those 
queer, dome-shaped sod structures (very like an Exqui- 
mau's "ingloo") that he fired it in, and when the smoke 
came piping out of the burrow-like entrance, they, hid- 
den in a neighboring thicket, unseen, but seeing with 
wonder-wide eyes, \yhispered to each other under their 
breath, ''Meah's 'telcole' is burning," just as if it had 
been a volcano in action. When through the smoke 
they dimly saw the tall stooping figure, they took to 
their heels. 

But retreat was not always possible. At twilight one 
evening they met him in a narrow lane. He carried a 
huge old-fashioned fowling piece behind his back sup- 
ported by both hands, and, bent more double then usual, 
was peering into the semi-obscurity of the path before 
him. As they could not escape, and as there was an 
older brother with them, they bade him good evening 
and asked after his game. They told him eagerly that 
there were some partridges "budding" in the birches 
a little way back, but it did not excite him. 

'T dinna disturb the petrucks, they fly too high, it's 
the rubbuts I'm after," and he slowly passed on. 

He abhorred idleness and looked askance even at 
the leisurely. "None o' your idle set here" was his proud 
boast, and though his fingers were beginning to lose 
their cunning, and he was obliged often to say, "I canna 
wauld such sma things," yet he hammered away at his 
"cooman iron and swaddish iron" (Swedish or Russian), 



l6 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

and worked in wood of his own cutting and seasoning 
almost as hard. He was methodical and orderly, no 
tool could be displaced on his bench without his notic- 
ing it, and straightway he replaced it where it belonged. 
No man was more full of gratitude to his few friends, 
even for the most trifling favors, but he could never get 
over early prejudices and antipathies. If asked his age, 
he would turn away offended, and not speak to you for 
days, and he bemoaned the sudden death of a neighbor 
by saying: "It'll be an aufu loss to me; he used to 
mend my clock for naethin'!"' The muskrats, w^ood- 
chucks, squirrels, and some of the wdld birds, annoyed 
him terribly eating his corn and vegetables in the garden 
and cellar, and he was at his wits ends to circumvent 
them. "They wark at it as a reegular trade," he once 
said to the sympathetic miller, at the same time running 
out and hurling a stone at some unusually bold offender. 
The muskrats and woodchucks he tried to trap, but his 
home-made springs were so strong that the unfortunate 
culprits often escaped with the loss of a foot. 

Along towards the last he got another cjueer notion 
— he would like to marry. \^ery deaf, his memory and 
eyesight both failing, his teeth gone, his hair requiring 
constant treatment to keep it black, and nearly ninety 
years of age, he invited the girls of the neighborhood 
to call on him, and perhaps in his innocence (for he 
was like a child in some things) thought he could have 
his pick and choice. It has been said that some shame- 
less lassies did call, ate his sweetmeats, and then 
laughted in his face. Shame on them ! whoever they 
may have been. I hope he got oft' the notion with- 
out having the awful conviction at last dawn on him 
that thev would not have him. 



AULD GEORDIE. 17 

Nine hard boiled eggs (like Joseph's coat, of many 
colors) reposed on the cupboard shelf, and three chil- 
dren whose ages were steps and stairs from two to 
eight years, after peeping at them for the twentieth 
time, with a proprietary admiration, had been packed 
ofT to bed : it was Easter eve. The excitement of it 
all had not yet left at least one pair of eyes, that staid 
persistently wide open in the darkness of the garret, 
busy with the dyeing processes — the chemistry of lichen 
and logwood chips, and onion skins — for the aniline 
package had not yet crossed the threshold of this little 
log home, where the tallow dip still disputed the inroads 
of kerosene, and the snuffers were periodically lost and 
found with the inevitableness of the seasons. 

There had been first the choice of eggs ; whether 
they should be dumpy or long shaped, big or little, 
even at both ends or pointed at one end and rounded 
at the other. All the boys as well as Papa had dis- 
cussed this, some arguing for the greater strength of 
the pointed end, others citing the Roman arch in sup- 
port of the rounded end. One thing was clear to the 
philosopher of eight, the big speckled one with both ends 
rounded was the best after it was broken. After they 
were boiled hard in the innocent vegetable dyes . that 
were available, the purple and buff, and green, and mot- 
tled playthings were anxiously examined for cracks, 
and then the children were fain to take alternate choice, 
though of course not for "keeps," and without handling. 
Great was the interest in the game. The one that had 
first choice could of course get the "terrible precious- 
est," but that was somewhat counterbalanced by the 
unwilling acceptance of the last one, according to the 
unique formula 123, 312, 231; and as quick as 
they got through, they generally agreed to try it over 



10 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

with a change all round. Thus it happened that each 
one in the course of the afternoon had had imaginary 
possession of all the eggs in turn, and the momentous 
question was still undecided at bed time. 

The prospect of even last year's grass to toss the 
eggs on was also a source of speculation with the wake- 
ful youngster ; as there was still much snow in the 
woods, and only a wee bit of sandy lawn had been par- 
tially cleared of snow, with the aid of a shovel first, 
and the sun afterward. Perhaps it would be more fun 
to toss eggs on the bed, or at the fast vanishing straw 
pile. As he found it impossible to decide and was 
getting drowsy, he muttered, "I'd take the big speckled 
one first grab," and went to sleep. 

The storm had come up against the wind with 
rumble and flash, and when overhead it seemed to go 
no further, but after a few appalling volleys, started 
to drown itself out in one supreme downpour. Mamma, 
listening to the wild ado outside, heard a gurgling pres- 
ence in the chamber, and found the icy snow broth 
rushing by the bed. The brook, confined by the gorge 
above, was pouring through the house. The sleepers 
were hurriedly aroused, and dressed by the lightning. 
Jimmie had put his socks on the mat by the fire to 
dry, but when he jumped on it as the only dry floor 
in sight, it went down with him. Another urchin catch- 
ing sight of the water from the top of the stair, cried 
out with the pessimistic instinct that has since dis- 
tinguished him ; 

"O we're all killed, we're all killed." 

A refuge was found in the little smithy on the 
hillside, where the household goods from the ground 
floor were stored, the men-folks carrying on the work 
of rescue until even some grain in a bin was shoveled 




BLOCKLOCKS FORCE. 



AULD GEORDIE. I9 

Up out of the water and saved. The inside of the house 
was a queer sight at this time. The cellar trap door 
floated open on its hinges, and a confused medley of 
carrots, beets, onions and turnips was vomited out, 
while the rats, drowned out of their holes, clung des- 
perately to the grain bags, and had to be knocked off 
into the water. 

How fared "Auld Geordie" this while? His house, 
lower down the valley was also close to the stream, 
and he was too deaf to be awakened by the tumult of 
the waters. Thinking he might be swept away house 
and all for want of a friendly warning, two of the l)oy3, 
after the immediate personal peril was past, went down 
and aroused him. 

'''Mr. Mearns, Mr. Mearns," they howled, ''you must 
get up, there's a fiood." 

A window was raised, and a night-capped head 
appeared with a vigorous grunt not expressible in writ- 
ing, and the query, 

'T dinna ken wha' it might be." 

"It's me — John — " was bellowed back, "we thought 
you might drown, so we came to wake you." 

"Oh aye, I'll gang and see aboot it." 

He descended to the cellar and soon reported "Sax 
foot of water or thereaboot, but the foundation is weel 
and secure," winding up with a muttering, half-impreca- 
tion, half-warning to the "muskrats," and "ither folk, 
that might tend til their own business." The boys came 
away feeling rather foolish and crestfallen. 

At length all the family were gathered in the smithy, 
the wet feet supplied with stockings through mother's 
forethought, and the night-watch commenced. It was 
really a merry affair for the younger ones after the 



20 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

scare was over ; lunch was eaten (some of the dyed 
eggs alas ! that had been broken). "Ave Alaria Stella" 
and other hymns were sung, and all pauses were filled 
with the grave tick-tack of the family clock, installed 
on "Old AI call's" work bench. The father, however, 
anxiously watched the old house until the water began 
to go down, as it had a sand foundation, and was 
expected to fall, if the soil washed out from beneath the 
corner next the stream. A solidly corded wood-pile, 
and a clump of basswood trees, had fortunatelv stood 
between the water debouching through the narrow neck 
of the glen and the house, or it would have been doomed. 

The sudden freshet had been caused by the warm 
thunder shower melting the snow on the hills. The 
water collected in the ravines and on the fields, and, 
the ground being frozen, quickly ran off to the stream. 
It was sixty feet wide below the mouth of the glen. 
A\ hen the dawn came, the yeasty stream had lowered 
considerably and was again confined by its banks, but 
was breaking over the bridge connecting the house with 
the studio and stables. When it was light enough, and 
after due deliberation on the condition of the bridge, 
all crossed over on the wrecked timbers, and the sleepy 
ones went to bed at sunrise in the studio. Nothing was 
lost in the flood but one of the eight-year-old's shoes, 
and the snuffers. 

The waters went down to their normal flow and 
clearness, the old house was mopped out and dried out, 
and the family, and later on the rats moved in again, 
but not to stay, the house was small at best, the family 
was shooting up, and a bigger house had been built on 
a neighboring place, called "Wild Rose Farm." Before 
the present house was built on the Glen property, and 
the erstwhile farmers had returned, Mearns had s^iven 



AULD GEORDIE. 21 

Up the notion of getting married, and confessed that 
his memory was so far gone that he could not remem- 
ber over night what he had promised to do the next 
day. He returned to his relations in the east. The old 
log house and the little dug-out smithy were pulled 
down. In the roof of the former a quantity of copper 
pennies minted by local merchants as was then the cus- 
tom were dislodged from a cranny among the shakes 
or long, hand-split oak shingles. Where do the pennies 
go? These have gone with the rest, but then tlicy 
were given to the boys, and one of them at least feels 
guilty of carelessness, in this, and other ways. The in- 
dulgent reader has probably ere this identified the writer 
with that careless boy, and he will not be sorry ; as 
a little indulgence will be ver}- welcome. Boyhood 
recollections are a series of pictures in intense relief, 
devoid of "half-tone," and utterly unreliable as even con- 
necting links in a continuous history. Only mature 
years can connect the facts of a personal knowledge 
witn the knowledge of hearsay, or deduction, and make 
the whole live in the mind as a continuous narrative. 
There was a time — quite vivid if yet with a queer ghost - 
liness about it — when Old Mearns really belonged in 
our landscape at the Glen, then a time when he was 
gone but inquiixd about, and a strange silence brooded 
over his house. Then the house itself disappeared and 
there only remained the cellar hole, still tenanted by tlie 
woodchucks, though they had to look elsewhere for 
their supply of garden roots, and this last transforma- 
tion endures (woodchucks and all) unto this day. The 
last bone-hard oak lumber he wrested from the woods, 
the last stumps of the trees he felled, have disappeared. 
The marks of his chisel still pass for the imprints of 
prehistoric bears' tracks on a huge sandstone boulder 



22 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



by the stream, but a grapevine is trellised on the site 
of liis forge, and the oldest inhabitants of the woods 
and the streams have long since forgotten him. 




UPHILL BEGINNINGS. 



It was probably the first picnic that had been held 
in that wild place; a fiat-topped rock served for tabU-. 
and the "pictured" and scalloped cliff for background. 
It was also the first of May, and a little white statuette 
of the ''Virgin Mother" the "Queen of the May" was 
niched above the limpid stream, and that most beautiful 
of all the Litanies commencing "We fly to thy patron- 
age O Holy Mother of God" was chanted to the mur- 
muring of the brook, and the silent astonishment of the 
birds. Then the feast commenced, appetite having long 
waited impatiently on opportunity among the younger 
picnickers. We culled no flowers to grace the spread, 
for the white trillium and the "pale heart flower of the 
rock" (dicentra cucullaria) nodded and blossomed beside 
us. We were seven, and were taking possession of the 
Glen, after a winter's sojourn almost if not quite within 
view of this promised land of rocks and streams. Ei t 
four walls could not contain us to-day, and so, laden 
with the midday meal, we had invaded the solitude that 
was hereafter to be so close to our doors and hearts. 

And so the family were safely housed with food 
and shelter in the log house by the Glen mouth, but 
it was ten miles to the nearest church, and mkmma's 
heart was troubled. "We will build a chaprel di the 
pine hill," said father, and straightway with the boys 
he brushed out a road to the summit, and John triumph- 
antly announced that if they had no church they at 



24 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



least had a road to it. Across the valley, on the south- 
ern face of the opposing bluff they next quarried and 
gathered together from the surface a heap of building 
stones of suitable size and quality — they were freestone 
— and thus was the little chapel of St. Mary's of the Pines 
commenced in the wilderness. But it takes money as 
well as stones to raise chapel walls, and mother still 
doubted ; and even father could not deny that dollars 
did not grow on every bush in the woods. The site 
was there, the building stones were in abundance, and 
there was a road between them ; even faithful old Nell 
that had brought us all the way from Milwaukee was 
still fit for harness, l^ut alas! for the very necessary 
commodity that we all know is needed to ''make the 
mare go.'' 

One day a shadow darkened the cottage doorwavt 
the shadow of a stranger. 

''I hear you are going to build a church." 

''Yes," father told him, "I am thinking of it." 

''You are the very man to do it, you are neither 
Irish or German," meaning evidently that father on 
account of his nationality would be acceptable to both. 

They walked up the hill together, and father unfolded 
his plans (or rather his hopes) to the attentive stranger. 

''How large would you build?" Father named the 
size that he had thought of — a very modest one. 

"That is too small," was the instant rejoinder. 

"Now," thought father, "I wonder will yon give 

jaiHii\-thiiBg)ito make it larger," but almost simultaneously 

with the thought came the stranger's dictum, "I will 

^rivCiiTwa Hundred Dollars." That was a great sum 

in those days. 

Bravo ! the chapel walls fof more generous plan) will 
rise ; noble patron, "]\Iay your shadow never be less !" 




GUARDIAN OF THE GLEN 




UPHILL BEGINNINGS. 25 

This was thirty years ago ; I close my eyes and lo ! the 
Old Stranger is himself a shadow — a recollection — but 
the chapfl is there." 

However, it did not come all at once. Father was 
urgently called back to his class-room in St. Francis 
Seminary ; wild nature, that is here always encroaching 
on us, began to obliterate the brushed-out road and 
irrepressible young growths to shake hands across it; 
and even our stranger had not make good his word. 

Were there those who winked, or grinned and said 
with the Indian: "White man very uncertain?" 
It is more than probable. 

But wait: Father returned with some urban sub- 
scriptions to the proposed chapel and the stranger ful- 
filled his promise. 

Two priests, Fathers Petit of Portage, and Heiss, 
Rector of St. Francis and afterwards Archbishop of Mil- 
waukee, had already said mass in the studio, and the 
project of a chapel had been noised abroad and tali.ed 
about among the cottagers of the valley and the great 
stony ridge to the west, called at that time from ,ne 
nationality of its residents the Irish bluff. The times 
vrere ripe for the undertaking, and father set the machin- 
ery in motion. A word to this one, and a message to 
that one and it was done; the men "rose a bee" to 
quarry and haul the stone. Bye and bye the sledo-e 
hammer and the crowbar were ringing among the rocks 
on the other side of the valley and round to the west 
of the Glen, and the humble believers from the country- 
side around were freighting building stone across the 
meadow and up the pine hill with their clumsy oxen 
and gaunt horses. The foundations were dug and the 
rude rubble walls began to rise. For their building 
home talent sufficed— Mr. Hamilton of the School Sec- 



26 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



tion — but a carpenter, David Gardner, was imported 
from Milwaukee for the roof. Before these evidences of 
the fruition of father s liopes and mother's prayers the 
prospective congregation that raUied around St. Mary's 
contributed of their hard earned substance as weU as of 
their work, and the walls were at last covered by a gothic 
roof, and mass was said for the first time by Father 
Thos. Keenan. Then the babies in arms came to the 
baptismal font, the children trooped to Sunday School, 
the old men met in grave committee as to ways and 
means. And then soon — so soon — these last, one, and 
then another of the little band, came for the last time 
over its threshold, and were laid to rest on the sunny 
southern slope ; and the marble and granite monuments 
of the city of the dead began to gleam among the young 
pines, the veronica, and the turkey foot. 'Tn the midst 
of life we are in death," and by the side of the tabernacle 
for the living are the narrow^ cells of the dead. 




SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 



On the 7th of March, 1891, I returned "from the 
land of the white rabbit, from the falls of Mmnehaha" 
to slightly misquote Longfellow. Seated behind the 
tough little ponies "Buckskin" and "Pet," I soon left 
the station in my rear. An unbroken trot of live miles 
down through the center of a narrow strip of prairie 
bordering the Baraboo river, brought us vo a more 
rolling and less thickly settled country. Under a damp 
leaden sky I noted the dark purpling of the leafless oak- 
clad hills touched here and there with the misty grey- 
ness of a poplar grove, the acres and acres of white 
oak ''grubs" or saplings still clothed in their summer 
garb of leaves but now moistureless and brown, while 
at intervals by the roadside fence, with its tangle of 
brambles and hazel brush, rose the gorgeous heads of 
the sumach fruit, bright as a sunrmer bloom amid the 
winter's desolation. Just before entering tlie woods T 
met a wide-eyed and solemn youngster, who seemed to 
remember me, and ventured on a timid and rather invol- 
untary sounding "hello" ; a little farther on, horn the 
last house, a savage dog rushed out and attacked the 
team. I remember feeling an insane desire for a shot- 
gun, revolver, or at least a good carriage whip, but I 
had none of them, and it was just as well, the dog soon 
went back — a neighbor's dog too. As I turned in at 
the well-known gate Pet slipped on the concealed ice 
and fell on her side ; a warninof I would have done well 



28 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

to heed, as on descending the winding road into the 
Glen, we came to a nervous standstill on the brow of an 
icy incline impassible for either man or beast. The 
frightened but cautious ponies stood immovable in their 
tracks until I had freed them from the cutter and each 
other, when, leaving Buckskin to take care of herself, 1 
dragged the other into the bushes by the roadside where 
the footing was safe. Buckskin essayed the descent, 
but was soon lying in a helpless heap on the glassy 
path, and had to be helped to a safer footing among 
the saplings, like her companion. The rest of the jour- 
ney to the house I made on foot in the deepening 
dusk, leading the team and listening to the silence, that 
seemed to have descended on the valley like a deep 
fall of snow, unbroken by track or trace of movement 
and life. Not a note had I heard of either bird or wild 
animal, I had evidently arrived at the "Glen" in time 
to receive and welcome the "spring visitors" from their 
Southern sojourn. 



On the 19th the cautious advances of the spring 
tempted me out and down the valley ; the water was 
gushing in the sleigh tracks, and I saw two black snow- 
birds skulking along a fence row, also crows, shore 
larks, and blue jays, and heard the seemingly contented 
''tea's ready'" of the chickadee. Everything seems wait- 
ing, the spring birds, the musicians, are not yet here. 
T began thinking of the old Indian sitting on a runway, 
chewing an ear of corn while waiting for the deer, and 
reMecting that if "he come not to-day he come to-mor- 
row; come not to-morrow, maybe he come next day.'' 
The evening following in the damp dusk, I heard a 
throaty, croaking note, suggestive of chronic hoarse- 
ness, and looking up noted the headlong, zigzag flight 



SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 29 

of a woodcock, Spring's first messenger racing north 
\v'itli the news. Next day alas ! Winter's relaxing grasp 
tightened again, and I turned to the chickadees for 
comfort and entertainment. They stealthily congregale 
in a dense pyramidal spruce tree, one by one pop round 
the corner of the house to the back door-yard or "mid- 
din" in search of civilized dainties; regale themselves 
for a while, and then fly away in an opposite direc- 
tion. A steady stream of bobbing, black-capped heads 
appear from the direction of the sheltering spruce, so 
I am led to believe they return in a circle and repeat 
their visit, always approaching from one side and dis- 
appearing at the other. The Nuthatches also appear 
these sharp, frosty mornings, investigating the wood- 
pile in search of those big black ants that winter in 
the cavities of the large white oak trees, and are occa- 
sionally brought to light and destruction by the wood 
chopper's ax — ruthlessly thrust out, stiff and insensible, 
to be devoured, or perish in the snow. 

What a quaint, subdued, monosyllabic conversation 
the male Nuthatch (distinguished by the blacker, silkier 
sheen of his crown and nape) keeps up with his wife on 
such occasions, contrasting sharply with the soft, well 
modulated, yet outspoken and ringing note emitted 
from the security of the tree tops, or the rollicking 
'Tvoy, yoi-yoi-yoi-yoi" one occasionally hears from the 
depths of the woods, strangely suggestive of a sports- 
man calling his dog. Nuthatches always interest me. 
Their trim individuality of appearance, their devotion 
to each other (the pair is inseparable throughout the 
year) their breezy unsophisticated saucy boldness or 
timid reserve, are alike charming. But they drift into 
the background in the summer whirl. 



30 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

The 29th — Easter Sunday — opened with a burst of 
warm sunshine, and the song of the Robin and Blue- 
bird. The evening previous I had heard the voice of 
the Canada goose — the wandering "wabe-wa-wa" — 
sounding Hke a lost spirit from nowhere^ as he groped 
around in the misty upper regions, but towards morn- 
ing it must have cleared of¥, for I lay and listened to 
the muffled drum-beat of the partridge. I tool^c a 
leisurely Sunday stroll beside our swollen trout stream ; 
turbulent and muddy, quite unlike its normal limpid 
clearness, it must worry the life out of the speckled 
beauties, as there is no escape for them from this 
"Spring housecleaning," they cannot move out until it 
is over. Budded marsh marigolds are pushing up their 
heads enquiringly through the marshy ooze of some of 
the springs, a hint that the season is late, they have 
been holding back their leaves for fear of a frost bite 
until the blossoms are now due. A driving equinoc- 
tial storm of wind and rain ushered in the 30th, and 
riding it high in air come the Blackbirds. I recognize 
them by their note, they fly too high for sight identifi- 
cation what with the sleet in one's eyes, and the leaden 
sky for background. 

What a tremulous tender trill is the song of the 
black snow'nird ! It comes like a ripple of distant sleigh 
bells, from out the dripping shrubbery, the voices of 
quite a numljer of intermittent singers chiming cheerily 
together. Their singing is evidently a community affair, 
n.o 'one bird singing for in.dividual display. As the 
storm softened down to a warm drizzling mist, I ven- 
tured out inside a rubber coat, and noted the arrival 
of the song and fox colored Sparrows. A few sub 
dued, uncertain notes from the first named could be 
heard mixed in with the tremulous concert of the snow- 



SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 3I 

birds. Hard by the shrubbery that sheltered this busy 
crowd was a hairy Woodpecker, pounding away at a 
stump, paying not the shghtest attention to me or any 
one else, perfectly absorbed in his task. Rudely dis- 
turbed, he flies a short way and alights with a sharp 
interrogatory "r//////e," or if he thinks he is driven off 
for good, retires with a number of '\'Jiinks/' as much 
as to say "that settles it, that clinches the argument." 
He is an earnest, hard-working fellow ; during a long 
acquaintance I have never known him to indulge in a 
moment's recreation, or foolish levity of manner. 

The Blue Jay, on the other hand, has enough for 
two, yet I think his levity of manner the most charm- 
ing thing about him. I think I have never done justice 
to his vocal powers, nor have others so far as I know. 
He is a many sided mimic, and I believe is quite 
conscious of his power, which he uses with singular 
discretion, considering that he is a thief and a rogue. 
He astonished and delighted me to-day with a striking 
imitation of the blood-curdling scream of the red-tailed 
hawk, which sent the hens in wild disorder to the shelter 
of a thicket, only to appear in his true voice and colors 
a moment later. I do not know why he uses his voice 
for our benefit so loudly or so often, unless he is a 
politician. Ah ! it dawns on me — this last trick — it is 
the 1st of April! Well done, mocking spirit in blue! 
you have fooled both me and the chickens this time. 
The above date also brought me the mellow note of 
the meadow lark, and a glimpse of the chipping spar- 
row, though the snow still blankets the northern ex- 
posures, and lingers in patches about the valley and in 
the shrubbery. 

The 2nd showed a varying sky, with the usual smiles 
and tears, though the latter were suspiciously like snow 



32 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

flakes. The intermittent sunshine awoke into hfe a 
confused medley of sounds — hum of bees — the barking 
of squirrels — the Sparrows, Bluebirds, Robins, all softly 
trying their voices at once. How inadequately "bark"' 
expresses the merry, mocking voice of the squirrel ! 
'^Qiiacck, quacck, qiiacck qiiacck, quae;' he seems to say 
to me, dwelling with lengthy emphasis on the last 
word, and I know of no sound that so quickly stirs 
the hunter's blood within me. I saw his comical little 
brother the chipmonk or "fence mouse" — lean and silent 
but chipper and active — racing along the skirts of a 
clearing as if for dear life ; he hugged the fence pretty 
closely and traversed twenty-five panels in less than 
two minutes. The bright eyed little "monk" was prob- 
ably hungry after his long fast, I noticed he made 
straight for the foot of a grapevine, on which a few 
dried berries hung. 



Two inches of a fall and still snowing, was the look- 
out for the 3rd — white desolation, the birds nowhere 
to be seen. I suppose they are housed under many a 
jutting rock and dense growth of evergreen, huddled 
into hollow trees and under fallen trunks and brush 
piles. With puffed out feathers and closed eyes, they 
may be dreaming of the South ; or their active little 
brains may 1)e planning how to procure warmth and 
food ; perhaps they neither dream nor plan, who knows. 
We know co little, the wisest cannot yet tell us what 
instinct is. Last summer I was the amused spectator 
of a scene that should figure in the great controversv 
of instinct versus reason. Hearing the long drawn note 
of agony that escapes the domestic hen when in the 
deadly clutch of the weasel, I ran toward the sound, 
which brought me to the brink of the trout stream. 



SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 33 

On the rather high and abrupt bank were ranged a 
row of hens, silent, and evidently paralyzed with fear 
or curiosity; while a rooster, with excited ^'cuc-ciic-ca'u'- 
cia\^' danced a furious break-down on the very verge; 
all parties evidently absorbed in the tragedy that seemed 
to be happening in the water. As I approached the 
same agonizing call, though much weaker than before, 
and the frantic efforts of an exhausted hen to mount 
the bank, caused me to think that some water animal 
had the hen's feet in its grasp, but I was mistaken. 
The hen had attempted to fly across the stream from a 
low bank to a high one, and not rightly calculating the 
distance and her obesity, had fallen into the water. There 
she stood ! up to her neck, getting weaker every 
moment, and totally unable to mount the bank, even 
with the rooster's voluble encouragement, though she 
essayed it time and again. She did not seem to be 
aware that behind her lav the safetv of shallow water 
and low beach. 



A week of wintry weather, when I should be writing- 
sunshine and the swallow, and the green mantle of 
nature. The birds that have arrived it is true are here, 
though silent and discouraged, but the tide of immigra 
tion has abruptly stopped. The winter wren greets me 
with cheerful impudence as I am helping to stack the 
winter's cut of stovewood, running in at the farther 
end of the pile with a high petulant note, and popping 
out noiselessly at my feet, to inspect me with fearless 
curiosity, and many a jerk of that funny little tail of 
his. I have noticed that some very small birds, seem 
lacking in that fear of man's presence, so noticeable in 
the larger ones. 



34 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

The lOth awoke refreshed after the driving rain of 
yesterday and the night's more gentle weeping, the 
song sparrows are perched conspicnously at intervals 
down the valley in fnll song, the rush of water sounds 
from every ravine, the limp, drenched, last year's dead 
oak leaves distil diluted yellow dye, and though the 
mist hovers about the hill tops, we somehow feel that 
spring has really arrived. In my walk this morning I 
saw abundance of bluebirds, blackbirds, nuthatches, and 
robins, and heard the voice of the meadow and shore 
larks, arising from the valley pastures. As yet there 
is no sun, but the birds are all singing as with an assur- 
ance of fair weather at last. To-day (the 12th) the wel- 
come sun shines steadily, the mourning dove is cooing, 
the leopard frogs grope languidly about in the muddy 
water of the brook, and I find clusters of hepatica buds 
pushing up through the scattered forest leaves. Their 
own have kept green all winter under the snow, lovely 
in their delicate tints and markings, and elegant out- 
line. I put one in front of a bit of sensitive albumen 
paper and got a beautiful imprint, as clear-cut and wild 
as the impression of a squirrel's foot in the snow. 

Warm showers on the 13th prove more spring- 
like than the unclouded sun itself, and have quite as 
effectively got the ear of the drowsy vegetation slowly 
throwing off its lethargic sleep, and the chipping spar- 
row is rendering the garden plat gay with music between 
drops. Among the new arrivals the Goldenwing and 
the Ruby-crowned Wren, have joyously announced their 
presence. What a hearty fellow the Goldenwing is ! 
his ringing greeting is like the jolly laugh and vigorous 
band shake of a big-hearted countryman — quite infec- 
tious. The Grass Finch is here too, and my ear is 
greeted wnth the petulant wailing voice of the vellow- 



SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 35 

bellied woodpecker. The Water Thrushes arrived to- 
day (17th), and were hardly back in their old haunt, 
the thick copse bordering the brook, than they engaged 
as usual in a turbulent quarrel, interspersed with bursts 

ft 

of jeering melody. They arc the most argumentative 
birds among our visitors, and are not lacking in em- 
phatic gesture as well as voice, bobbing their heads and 
wagging their tails with great vivacity and persever- 
ance. Another lively bird has just arrived — the Ground 
Robin, a male — I have not yet seen the female. I find 
on looking over these notes that I have some way 
overlooked the Pewees, though they have been here, 
quite a while, for to-day I find them building. Have 
you ever noticed the pretty, solicitous utterance by 
which they give notice of the near presence of the nest? 

The Sparrows are our song birds par excellence in 
this early part of the year. This morning (the 21st) the 
chipping, field, song, and grass sparrows are all in 
full song; while the white-thrcated (a new arrival) is 
busy scratching over the dead leaves in the bushes. Tlic 
Chipping Sparrow's song is a delicate shake like that 
of the black snowbird, and may be described by ''chc-Iic, 
he-Ju\ Jic-Jh\ Jic-Jic, hc-Jic-Jic-Jic-Jic-Jic-Jic." That of the Field 
Sparrow is very often mistaken for it. but may be dis- 
tinguished by the gradually increasing speed with which 
it utters "cJica, chca, chca, chca, cJic-Jic, Jic-hc-Jic-Jic-Jic." 
The Song Sparrow has perhaps the most dramatic utter- 
ance, the climax of accent occurring on the third or 
fourth syllable. 

While I sit writing, the strident, grating note of 
the belted kingfisher comes in at the door and seems to 
say "fish for dinner," but I also hear the kill-deer plover 
and it says '"deer, kill-dccr;' so I do not know which it 
will be. I found two nests in progress of construction 



36 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

to-day, a robin's and a chipping sparrow's, both in 
spruce trees. (22d) The smaU yellow blossoms of the 
moosewood and the white star of the sajigiiiiiaria greeted 
me on my ramble through the w^oods this morning, both 
welcome assurances that growth has commenced in 
earnest, and at 7 :t,o P. M. I heard the first Whippoor- 
will. The delicate umber of the bursting elm buds and 
the pink inflorescence of the soft maple begin to tell in 
the landscape. I think nothing is more attractive than 
this first tinting of the woods ; even before the leaves 
come we have the brightening of the willows — beautiful 
bronzes, golden yellows, fine reds. 

(23d) The English Sparrow arrived! found our re- 
treat at last, and takes possession with the completest 
assurance. I watched him take up his station on the 
side of a lombardy, coolly stretch himself, and treat 
the "natives" to a long performance, half twitter, half 
rambling dialogue ; but the residents took not the 
slightest notice of him except perhaps one field spar- 
row, that fiew from where it was singing in the garden 
up to a few inches from where the visitor sat, and sang 
his rippling, sliding melody with delightful aplomb. The 
Cowbird (masquerading as a plain blackbird and with- 
out his wives) is seen occasionally fiying over and on 
the tops of small trees ; he does not settle down to fam- 
ily life until later. I begin to notice a slight subtle 
change coming over the woods, a delicate green hangs 
over the poplars and around the heads of the sugar 
maples, while the dead last-year's white oak leaves are 
dropping, loosened by the swelling of the buds. Every 
succeeding day at this season is a revelation of Nature's 
choice secrets, unfolding, growing. Though I hear him 
every night, the whippoorwill sings fitfully, two or three 
calls only, Init he is relieved by the frogs and toads, that 



SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 37 

are rehearsing their sing-song "water music" each night 
until I fall asleep. I have been noticing what I thought 
was a ver} persistent hyla, but it turns out to be only 
a squeaking bearing in the old pendulum clock of the 
fireplace! (28th) Aly Sparrow and my Pewee either 
have tired of their locations since I espied them, or else 
have concluded it was too early to build, for their nests 
have not progressed, but the Robin is laying. Right 
in among the bee-hives in the apiary I discovered a 
pair of Chickadees busy excavating a nest cavity in an 
old apple stump. I do not dare to investigate for fear 
of disturbing them, but they are down out of sight, 
and enjoying the prospect of housekeeping amazingly. 
They pop in and out alternately ten times a minute, 
and are feeling too elated to work long continuously. 
I had not observed them long when a bluebird appeared, 
and concluded to look the stump over, with a view to 
locating. Then there was war— noisy if not bloodv. 
It called together an interested audience of jays, wrens, 
robins, chewinks, and plenty of sparrows. One chicka- 
dee staid in the hole and made it lively for the blue- 
bird when it approached, while its mate carried on a 
vigorous warfare in the rear. They routed him after 
a while, Irjt I fear it has disgusted them with the neigh- 
borhood, for the stump was empty next day. 
Last of April, and 

'The swallow has come, the swallow has come, 

O fair are the seasons, and lig-ht 

Are the days that she brings 

With her dusky wings, 

And her bosom of snowv white." 

The bosom of this our first visitor is not very snowy, 
however, for it is the cliff svrallow : the barn swallow 



38 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

of the "snowy bosom" does not arrive until later. The 
pendant twigs of the grey birch are loaded all up the 
valley with golden-brown tassels — a glorious wealth of 
them — the treetops looking like ringletted heads of 
sunny auburn hair. May the ist, after some gardening 
I celebrate the perfect weather by a long walk in the 
growing woods, and find the rose-breasted grosbeak 
celebrating also, in leisurely, mellow vocalization. I 
start two passenger pigeons in the deep woods, sole 
remnant of the unnumbered multitudes that used to 
throng these woods some few years ago on their way 
farther north in the spring, and scoured them again in 
the autumn searching for acorns. I can not believe 
that the busy bustling crowds are all dead, yet where 
are they ? Have our woods grown distasteful to them ? 
Who can tell. At least it is not for want of food, for 
the acorns ripen as formerly, and rot unheeded on the 
ground. 

(May 5th) Quite a frost last night, the diccntni 
spectabilis and the tender perennials are bowing their 
heads, some of them never to raise them again I am 
afraid, while even the red clover fields show a slightly 
wilted expanse under the bright sun this morning. The 
oven bird that several days ago made the woods ring 
with his emphatic utterance, has been chilled into 
silence, like most of the other songsters that are now 
with us. The mother pewee broods on five pearly- 
white eggs in her moss nest under the bridge, the robin 
ditto on five blue-green ones in the mud-masonry among 
the spruce twigs ; they must be chilly. 

(7th-8th) Another warm burst, and with it the 
scarlet tanager, black and white creeper, brown thrush 
and wood thrush arrive. The notes of the last named 
are tinkling through the dim, indistinct woods as I 




WOOD THRUSH. 



SPRING VISITORS AT THE GLEN. 39 

write, sometimes the song, sometimes the mellow pro- 
testing utterance well-known to all who seek the wood 
thrush in its haunts, and investigate its nesting. The 
thistle 1)ird appears to-day in a yellowing coat, he will 
soon be the yellow bird or goldfinch. I have recog- 
nized him through the winter by his flight and song, 
and will be glad to welcome him in his summer suit to 
his place in the landscape. The woods are wearing a 
woolly cloak, touched with an endless gradation of soft 
tints, reminding one of the downy hooded garment the 
fond mother is wont to wrap around her darling, and 
the new arrivals crowd on me so thick that I fail to 
recognize them all. Wilson's thrush, the catbird, indigo 
bird, oriole, redheaded woodpecker, vireo, chestnut- 
sided warbler, yellow throat, and a multitude of other 
charming little warblers are peopling the Glen with a 
peaceful tenantry, among which it is pleasure to dwell. 
Four new nests to-day — two more robins and two spar- 
rows, also a genuine surprise in the discovery of the 
song of the white throated sparrow ; a clear fiute-like 
piping treble almost exactly like the leisurely ''teas 
vcady'^ of the chickadee in pitch and timbre, but much 
longer and more varied, with an apparent drop of a 
major third towards the end, the whole something like 
''tcc-tcc-fcc-tcc-tcc-tcc-tcc-tcc-tcc-to-day.'' I have been cred- 
iting it to the chickadees for some time, and wonder- 
ing at the increasing variety. The song that has been 
generally credited to the redstart, I to-day traced to its 
rightful owner the golden-winged warbler. The syllables 
''fcc-fcc-'-a'Jicc'^ the first one slowly and the last two rap- 
idly, give some idea of the rythm, but the tone has the 
peculiar vibratory burr of the tree toads and some insect 
voices. Last and least, though in no sense insignificant, 
comes the "rubv throat" and I feel that our circle is 



40 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



complete. It is true that I have not exchanged regards 
with all of our visitors, but I know they are here, and 
enjoying themselves. Some, like the purple martin, are 
too urban in their tastes to visit us thus early after 
their arrival, others find the swamp and river bank 
more congenial, while the swallows (white bellied, barn, 
clifT and bank) find no nesting places here, and only 
show themselves in the evening skies during their insect 
hunting flights from the larger adjacent valley. As T 
close my record the chimney swallows — three of them — 
come racing up the valley on giddy wing and with much 
chippering, to make a proprietary survey of the chimney 
they usually occupy and then chase each other crazily 
down the valley again. Music and lovcmaking fill the 
long dav, and soon each feathered pair will boast a 
cozy house, built with a single circular wall, and lighted 
artist fashion from the sky. 




A HARDVvOOD ROMANCE. 



''Yes sir; that there load of wood is six dollars, 
and worth it too.'' 

I was standing in the wood market of a "driving" 
western town, a snfftciently driving snow storm was on, 
and before me stood a goodly load of hard maple bil- 
lets, just the right length for my stove; which, when 
I left it a few minutes before, was trying to turn a last 
water-logged chunk of half-rotten birch into heat. 

But between me and that coveted load of wood 
stood the lean countryman in his tattered wolfskin great- 
coat and uncouth woolen extremities, repeatmg, and 
sticking to his first-named price. 

Was he romancing? 

Not at all ; the wood was dry ; the sap of romance 
was long since gone, out of it, and he, poor man, no 
doubt needed the money. We finally compromised, he 
agreeing to carry it upstairs as I was not well, and he 
was anxious to get home out of the storm. 

I heaped my smouldering fire with fresh fuel, and 
as the warmth began to reach me, my thoughts pre- 
pared to drift off without my benumbed five senses, 
into that summer land that always lies before and behind 
us even in winter. A whirling gust of the December 
storm in the chimney suddenly blew a puff of smoke in 
my face from the battered stove, and lo ! it brought 
the pungent odor of the sugar-bush fire, and the flavor 
of its luscious product to my memory ; the romance 



42 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



still lingering in the dry maple firewood after all. Pic- 
tures and stories of sugar making always have an espe- 
cial interest for the young with their unfailing predilec- 
tion for sweets ; and well I remember that long before 
my personal experience went further than the adulter- 
ated cakes of the confectioner, and the delicious birch- 
bark packages of soft sugar liavored reminiscently of 
the wigwam, I romanced in my own fashion about the 
maple grove. It is true the only help I got from the 
picture book was misleading. There, a majestic maple 
tree appeared clothed in its summer suit, also with a 
large spout protruding from its trunk, adown which 
coursed a torrent of sap, into a brimming ten-gallon 
tub, that was about to be removed by two negroes ! 
This unique illustration appeared in an excellent mag- 
azine published in the fifties by Alex. Montgomery 
at 17 Spruce St., N. Y. Well, times and customs, and 
some say even nature changes; (yet not to this 
extent let us hope) anyway, observation is not confined 
to the draughtsman and scribe nowadays. 

But come with me to the real enchanted grove, the 
veritable sugar-bush of my boyish recollections, where 
my shoes took on the curious tinge of lacerated beef- 
steak around the edges through much crunching of the 
crusted snow, when I got jolly wet feet, and conse- 
quently many a curtain lecture from Mamma, but had 
nevertheless a glorious good time. This, too. is a chron- 
icle of the Glen; and the "Bush" lay along the swampy 
borders of a small creek to the South that had cut its 
way through the marsh muck down to a foundation 
of rough boulders, among Avhich it twisted and gurgled 
and fretted, its murmurings plainly heard beneath its 
covering of snow and ice. Towards spring in Febru- 
ary or March, when the bright warm sunshine com- 




MAKING MAPLE SYRUP. 



A HARDWU(JD KOxMANCK. 43 

menced to tempt the sap into the outside fil^res of the 
gnarled and shaggy maple trunks, a sheltered spot on 
solid ground conveniently near to the center of the 
"bush" was selected, and a large iron kettle swung on 
a pole between two crotched trees or posts. Around 
this center of operations a large assortment of dry 
fallen timber for fuel was gathered, and then, armed 
with battle ax and tapping iron, we gaily commanded 
the trees to yield us their liquid sweetness. On the 
sunny side of the trunk at a convenient height from the 
ground (I should say snowj a slanting incision was made 
with the ax, and underneath where it came to a point 
at the lower corner, a thin splint or spout of basswood 
was fastened with the aid of a chisel or gauge, to guide 
the trickling life blood of the wounded tree into the 
trough or pail set below to receive it. In old times a 
round billet of black ash about 30 inches long was split 
in two, and the halves hollowed out like a ''dugout" 
canoe to receive the sap, but more progressive and less 
industrious youngsters suggest the use of milk tins, 
stoneware jars and bottles, and wooden pails, borrowed 
temporarily from the dairy. As the sap accumulates 
the trees are visited, and the clear, sickly-sweet Hquid 
is placed over the fire to evaporate its surplus moisture. 
Towards night as the sun descends and the air grows 
more chilly the trees stop running, and then the evapora- 
tion or "boiling down" of the sap already collected is 
pushed briskly on, so as to be "sugared of¥" if possible 
the same night. Often have I sat by the camp fire, 
heaping it up at intervals, and listening to the owls ; 
the stars twinkling brightly through the leafless branches 
overhead, and the cold slowly creeping down my back, 
as I waited for the syrup to thicken sufficiently for sugar- 
ing off in the house. 



44 



ANNALS OF THE GI.EN. 



This is the crowning event of the day. All gather 
around the stove and watch it froth and boil. At first 
it is rather inky, with a whitish froth, then it becomes 
a creamy bubbling mass of a rich changing brown. 
A cup of fresh milk is added to clear it of superfluous 
coloring matter and other impurities, which unite with 
the milk and are skimmed ofT as they boil to the sur- 
face. Now it begins to snort and bubble as it thickens, 
while its warm delicious fragrance is wafted through 
the room ; it has to be stirred more vigorously to keep 
it from burning — then all at once it is into grainy, sand- 
like sugar; a fit mouthful for a king. But he would 
burn his tongue if he were at all greedy, for nothing 
is quite so hot I think as maple sugar just ofT the 
fire, and still molten and juicy. But then it is just 
the sweetest morsel my mouth has ever tasted, except 
some things commencing with K that I will not turrher 
particularize for fear of making the girls angry. 

This is the "merry go round" of sugar niakmg. 
Day after day the sap runs if the sun is warm and 
bright and the nights frosty, and every evening sees its 
"warm sugar social," and Mamma's store of sugar cakes 
and dry or ''stir" sugar goes on increasing. Sometimes 
a warm rain would set in and the trees would run all 
night and the product be wasted, or the family cow, 
with the roaming'. restlessness of the spring weather on 
her, would steal from tree to tree eagerly drinking 
the sap 'till she was likely to burst ; once I remember 
the ground cleared of snow and I went to gardening 
while still the sap gushed out ; eventually a drying south 
wind parches up the wound in the tree, and the sugar 
season is over. Not till we have learned, though, that 
sw^eet can always turn to sour (maple sap no better 
than men's tempers in this regard) for a keg of vinegar 



A HARDWOOD ROMANCE. ^c 

usually winds up maple sugar operations. It is very 
simply made. Sufficient sap is reduced by boiling to 
one sixth its original bulk, and then left to turn sour. 
It is the finest, and also the only safe clear vinegar in 
existence. When I think of its liavor, it makes the 
sugar taste sweeter by comparison. 

This is my own and younger brother's experience; 
father and the older boys first tapped our little grove 
when I was only old enough to look on; that is, during 
the day; at night I believe I was able to assist with- 
out any disabilities on the score of vouth. This 
first camp was on the bank of a little oozing spring, that 
all ^^-inter long kept the ground soft and miry, and 
tempted a few green things to show quite early. A 
length of connnon stovepipe, flattened out and turned 
up at the edges and luted with rags and clav at the 
corners, was their evaporator; and was mounted on a 
rude firebox of mud and stones. Close by stood a 
giant basswood, the tallest I have ever seen. It was 
hollow, and had an opening on the camp side suffi- 
cient to admit a man standing, and was used as a 
shelter for the guns and axes, together with the writer 
when he was caught in camp during a flurry of rain 
or snow. The tapping iron was an ancient one, bor- 
rowed from a farmer that had used it in Canada. It 
was just a large gouge The spouts were split with it 
from a billet of dry basswood or butternut, and then 
with a very little dressing they easily fitted into an 
incision made with the same tool underneath the ax 
gash, that collected the sap from the tree. All the 
trees were named after rivers and waterfalls : Niagara, 
Minnehaha, one with a very black trunk the Niger, 
another the Rapidan, still another the Ganges. The 
visitors at the camp were plentiful, and all expected some 



46 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

''sweetening"; and in exchange they gave their advice, 
and manifold experiences in Canada and Vermont. No 
doubt they all had something to say at the expense of 
the makeshift evaporator, yet the boys could truly say 
in the words of a neighbor, "It was not of much account, 
Jimmie, but it served my turn," for before the March 
winds and sun had parched up the last freshening cut 
of the ax, and the saccharine juices of the tree had 
started the buds to swell, a hundred and twenty-five 
pounds of sugar, unadulterated and brown, was found 
to the credit of the insignificant pieces of sheet iron. 

The maple tree not only gives us of its life-blood 
to sweeten our acetic (not ascetic) lives, but it often 
houses its only rival in the world of wild sweets — the 
honeycomb. \Mien its heart has become hollow with 
old age and dry-rot, such cavity is often discovered by 
the advance agents of some vagrant swarm, and ten 
thousand sweet-makers straightway turn it into a honey- 
house. Such a repository is called a bee-tree, and the 
discovery of one is a thrilling chapter in our hardwood 
romance. That inquisitive investigator, audacious in- 
ventor, and cheerful money-grubber, the Yankee, with 
his rules and regulations and manifold appliances for 
the delectation or bewilderment of civilized bees ; with 
his centrifugal force in harness for the magic extraction 
of honey, and his "foundation" to tempt to greater 
industry, has very much cheapened in more ways than 
one, the sweet product of the hiA^e ; but a piece of wild 
honey-comb is still as romantic, as in the days of John 
the Baptist, as well as a luscious morsel, and my first 
experience of wild honey and the bee-tree was in my 
early youth. Close by a well-used wood-road leading 
to the Glen property, and within a few rods of the line, 
stood a large, slightly leaning, hard maple, that in 



A HARDWOOD ROxMA.NCE. An 

^'Aiild Geordie's" time was the butt of every passing 
woodman's ax, as its well hacked trunk bore eloquent 
witness. Some one of the boys with quicker ear than 
the general passer, on striking his ax according to 
custom into the trunk, noticed a muffled hum; and 
investigation proved that the tree was tenanted by bees. 
It was allowed to stand until the fall, and then the 
owner of the land and the fortunate discoverer, with 
their relatives and friends, felled it in the starlight, and 
pillaged the queen-ruled citadel of sweets. If I remem- 
ber rightly, a tub. a wash-boiler, and several pails, were 
needed to hold the broken comb, which was evidently 
the accumulation of years. 

I next had the subject brought to my notice when, 
many years after, I paid a visit to the old home. Within 
a gunshot of where the old bee-tree stood, my sister 
and brother had baited some beautiful Italian bees, but 
though they knew their home was somewhere in the 
vicinity, they had so far failed to find it. As I had 
plenty of leisure and quite a fund of curiosity, I decided 
to "line" them, and discover the tree. When a small 
piece of honeycomb was exposed in the vicinity, it would 
soon be spied by some prowler, who quickly loaded 
up, and returning home announced the discovery, and 
then with many companions hied back to the w^el- 
come find. A constantly increasing number of bees 
would then fiy back and forth between the tree and the 
bait, until ever}- drop of honey was transferred to the 
tree, so its general direction could quite easily be deter- 
mined by their flight. I caught a few of them, placed 
them in a tumbler, and started up along the line, letting 
one go at intervals to see which way it would fiy. Some- 
times I would halt and give the prisoners a' feed, and 
then release them ; feeling sure they would return with 



48 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

companions to my last bait. 1 traveled in this way 
along the line until it led me straight into the deep 
forest and I lost it. Returning to my first starting 
point. I again gathered the bees, secured a tumbler 
full, and transferred them to the other side of the wood 
in which the tree was supposed to be. I fed them and 
turned them adrift, only to have them return with weak 
and staggering flight — they had not been able to find 
their line. They finally fell down exhausted around me, 
and soon died. I must have brought them to a locality 
that they were unacquainted with ; it was, I remember, 
an isolated field, dropped down as it were in the midst 
of thickly wooded hills. It was once the small hold- 
ing of a petty farmer, but he had moved out into the 
broader civilization of the prairie lands, and his home- 
stead was relapsing back into primitive wilderness, a 
frolic ground for the fox and the rabbit. 

But to return : the bee-tree must be near the border 
of the woods I first approached, so after baiting them 
there and noting the exact direction of their flight, I 
moved to one side with a few bees, and having fed 
them, established a cross line, and at the intersection of 
the two lines found the tree. They were beautiful yel- 
low Italians, very gentle and intelligent, but without 
winter stores — literally starving. My brother gave 
them a modern hive for their future home, and fed 
them through the months of cold with white sugar 
syrup, to be rewarded with three fine swarms in the 
season of clover bloom, and the establishment of a 
long line of quiet and industrious descendents. 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 



In the long ago, leisurely, sunny summers of my 
boyhood I commenced making the acquaintance of a 
charming band of singers, the members of our feath- 
ered choir. I had not then heard of Pope Gregory or 
Palestrina, was innocent as the birds themselves of 
Beethoven or Wagner, and did not pause to think that 
perhaps their songs might be considered just a little 
old fashioned, as they had added nothing to their reper- 
tory since creation day. I have renewed my acquaint- 
ance with these dulcet-voiced children of the woods from 
time to time with much pleasure, besides adding many 
new faces to my visiting list, and, dear reader, will 
gladly introduce you to my friends and favorites. They 
are nearly all soloists, each song is perfect in its way 
and perfectly rendered, and the variety is most pleas- 
ing. ]\Iany a little country or village quartette choir 
thinks itself composed of soloists, and they often sing 
four tunes at once, but the harmony is not improved 
thereby. Our feathered choristers are of rural extrac- 
tion and abode also, but though they often sing together 
their various songs, there is no discord. I am some- 
what puzzled over this, and the only theory or reason 
I can think of lies in the great altitude of bird tones, 
and their consequent rapid vibrations, which do not 
jar on each other so much as slower and lower ones 
would. 

A tireless band of songsters, full of quaint humor 
and musical enthusiasm, these shy sylvan friends are 



50 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

very near to my heart. Some of them make melody 
through the hours of darkness, an ecstatic fuU-voiced 
chorus greet the dawn, and even the dread heat of the 
August midday is braved by at least one hardy and good 
humored little musician. But they are only summer 
friends, they leave us to our regrets iij the winter. 
While speaking about regrets I may just as well con- 
fess that in order to get the photographs for the illus- 
trations of this sketch, a corresponding number of 
songsters had unavoidably to be silenced with a shot- 
gun and then mounted, but I hope I will be forgiven. 

Who has not listened to and loved the song of 
birds, even if indifferent to all other music? I almost 
feel as if the musician derived little or no advantage 
from his knowdedge and love of sweet sounds, for in 
spite of the many attempts to write down the music of 
bird songs, it never has been successfully accomplished, 
and never will be. Bird voices are too high, and their 
variation of intonation too slight to be caught and 
analyzed by even the most sensitive ear, and O ! how 
much less could they be represented by clumsy notes 
and rests even if caught. No matter, if I can make 
even one lover of nature's music say w^ien I describe 
a bird song, "Yes, I hear him, that is his voice," I 
will feel that ear and eye, and halting step, and clumsy 
fingers have not been ill employed. 

It troubles me to know where to commence, for 
you see I dislike early rising, but perhaps just for 
once I can "rise with the lark" or even earlier, so come. 
Any time after the dead hush of midnight, especially 
if the moon is in the heavens, the domestic cock ren- 
dered partly silly by domestication and man's uncer- 
tain hours, is liable to be heard chanting more or less 
musically, "Fm going to get up, Fm going to get iipF 




RED-EYED VIREO. 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 5I 

He's a blunderer, he thinks it is morning. On such 
nights the gamey cock Partridge may also be heard 
beating his throbbing tattoo, but I do not think he 
mistakes the hour ; I would rather believe he is a 
midnight philosopher, wakeful, and tired of silent con- 
templation. Well, l3oth these voices are uncertain and 
intermittent, and merely serve to emphasize the silences 
between. Even the dreaming Chipping Sparrow whose 
song goes off like a miniature silver alarm clock close 
by my window if I disturb it when retiring, only makes 
me feel more sensibly the depth of the hush resting on 
everything. It has much the same effect as a pebble 
dropped into a dark still pool, it only momentarily 
breaks its still calm surface. Yet hark ! Now we truly 
hear the first song voice of the new day yet only con- 
ceived, not born. '^Pray-for-juc-pray-for-nic, ycs-yoii- 
shall, li'hip-poor-zi'ill, ivJiip-poor-z^'ill." How many a poor 
sufferer with wakeful brain and thirsty lips, has listened 
to this voice and been eased by the hope of the coming 
dawn ! Yes, it is coming surely however dark it may 
be, the Whippoorwill is good authority. 

Besides singing us a cherished though rather mo- 
notonous song in early morning and late evening, the 
Whippoorwill has inspired a number of our popular 
song writers and poets, and is on this account a house- 
hold word even in localities it rarely visits. Unlike 
many other songsters it tunes up immediately on arrival 
in the spring, and it is popularly supposed that the 
farmer on hearing it concludes it is time to plant corn. 
I rather think that the voice of the Whippoorwill is a 
misleading one in this regard, but he does not mean it 
to be. No sir ! He is a bird that emphatically attends 
to his own business. This consists in catching a 
stomach full of insects, and lendinq- his voice to a 



52 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



chorus rehearsal during the last few, as well as the 
first, hours of the lonesome night watches. So persist- 
ent is he w4ien he thinks he ought to sing, that I have 
heard my brother cry "Shut up" to one singing on the 
roof without being able to silence it for long, and I 
myself have repeatedly hunted one from log to log in 
the evening, without turning him from his purpose. 

Another persistent songster is the Grass Finch. I 
would not mention him here, did not all his kindred 
tune their pipes at varying intervals between dawn and 
sunrise, and had not some of them from time to time 
been awarded the palm for early rising. I think myself 
that the Song, Chipping, White-Throated and Fox-col- 
oicd Sparrows are all tuneful harbingers of daylight, 
and very likely take turns of awakening the bird choir. 
They may also be heard singing at all hours of the 
da\', and one individual Chipping Sparrow already men- 
tioned, has regularly for years charmed me with its 
dreaming warble, w^ienever the midnight gleam of my 
candle flashes over its roosting place. The Ground 
Robin is another morning voice. Quite early he may 
be heard exchanging a quiet '\^Jiczvin¥' with his mate ; 
soon he mounts a stake, brushpile, or small tree, and 
tells us his simple serial story of ^'qnc-co-hcc^' at inter- 
vals of a minute. Old maids think he says : "Drink 
your t^a !" 

This brings us to the Thrushes, of which the Brown, 
or Thresher, is easily first. A robust, hardy moun- 
taineer is he, quick, though just a trifle awkward of 
movement, with blazing eye, and the finest dramatic 
voice in our whole bird choir. Though full of courage, 
and an open frequenter of the haunts of men (and an 
ardent admirer of his small fruits) he is possessed of 
a real boyish shyness when singing, and if he notices 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 53 

you listening, will stop at once ; but, like a good singer, 
he is often carried away by enthusiasm, and can then 
be approached with ease. On such an occasion I jotted 
down the follow^ing suggestion of his song, which I 
think will recall it to ears that have once heard it. 
"A'fl'-tT, ka'-cc ka-ce chc-'z^a chc-zva cJic-zva, kc-o kc-o, 
qii-ic qii-ic qii-ic, kc-ha kc-ha, oc-kcc oc-kcc oc-kcc, Jia-zcc 
ha-zvc, qiie-a-ya quc-a-ya, qui qui qui, ka-z'a! cJie-Jm chc-Jia 
che-ho, ac-cu-zi'c ac-cu-zce, kc-zi'c kc-zue/' &c. presto con 
animo. 

The old dispute as to the difference between instinct 
and reason comes freshly to my mind wdien I think 
of the performances of a pair of Brown Thrushes that 
I witnessed one summer. As every egg-gathering small 
boy knows, the Brown Thrush nests on the ground. 
Well, this pair had built a nest and nearly reared the 
young in the usual location, when along comes our large 
tom cat "Game" and devours the whole brood. The 
thrushes sorrowed for awhile, and then went to work 
anew on top of a brushpile near by. After incubation 
the cat again sacrificed the entire young family, yet the 
brave birds comm.enced a third nest, this time in a slim 
sapling almost directly over the scene of this double 
tragedy. They failed repeatedly to make a lodgment 
in the sapling, the materials all slipping from them to the 
ground, but they did succeed at last, and raised a brood 
in safety. 

Now let us call on his kinsman (by courtesy only, 
for the Brown Thrush really belongs with the mocking 
birds), the Hermit Thrush, that is if we can find him. 
We rarely know much of the life of a hermit until that 
life is past, and this hermit has so far successfully eluded 
both my gun and other more friendly enquiries. The 
well-knovv'n lines, 



54 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

*'Altho' I listen to thy voice 
Thy face I never see," 

may be aptly applied to the Hermit Thrush, and many 
I have no doubt have stumbled upon his elusive voice in 
some deep dell, and wondered what manner of bird the 
owner might be. I Jiaz'c seen him, but he vanished like a 
dream, and I cannot give you his photograph. Only in 
tlie most tangled coverts in the most sheltered glens 
will this recluse make his abode, and he cares little for 
the company of his relatives, I should judge ; at least I 
have never heard the songs of Hermit Thrushes within 
hailing distances of one another. John Burroughs, the 
poet-student of the wood birds, likens the song to the 
words "0/i spJicral spJicral,'' and the description is admi- 
rable, and enabled me to identify the bird at once. Wood 
Thrushes are much like "hermits" in general character 
and appearance, but are more domestic in their habits, 
much more numerous, and show^ less fear of man, as 
evinced by their nesting in close proximity to the house. 
Blest be their numbers ! will be the thought of anyone 
listening to their ecstatic exclamations issuing from 
every nook and corner of the dewy thicket as the dark- 
ness falls. Any indication or suggestion of the song 
by note or syllable is impossible, and all description 
inadequate. Think of the sudden short tinkle of a sil- 
ver bell, a fervent exclamation of rapture or devotion, 
the swxet senseless murmur of the young mother to 
her babe, and then hie to the twilight w'oods and hear 
the Wood Thrush for yourself. Wood Thrushes are 
ii^ost affectionate consorts. Wanting a specimen for 
comparison I sallied out early one evening and flushed 
a pair at their feeding. I follow^ed them some way 
through the brush before sighting, when the female fell, 
fluttering down mortally w^ounded, and soon lay quiet. 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 55 

Long before I reached the spot the male was there, 
hopping around the dead bird with palpitating bosom 
and a sharp note of grief, and perfectly careless of my 
approach to within two yards. Mystified at the silent 
form, it mounted to a low twig and commenced to sing. 
Never before or since have I heard such a splendid 
utterance, such eloquent trills, such soft persuasive elo- 
quence, such endearing, pleading, bird-tones, all evi- 
dently intended to reach and arouse the unheeding ears 
of the "silent partner" in my palm. At last it darted 
away with a stricken scream, and I was glad to think 
I should see it no more, as I did not want to shoot such 
a songster and yet did not want to see its grief. But 
it had only fiown back to where they had fed together, 
and not finding its mate there returned. Once more it 
sought the exact spot where she fell, and with ruffled 
plumage and disordered breathing, but still singing, 
searched fruitlessly among the leaves. I hurriedly left, 
and later on discovered the desolate nestful of cold 
eggs, and every day until the thrushes became silent, 
listened to a particularly brilliant performer among the 
many voices in that locality. The clay coated nest of 
the Wood Thrush may very easily be mistaken for that 
of the Robin, yet it invariably differs in two important 
items ; it is composed of leaves instead of grass on 
the outside, and instead of a grass lining, has one of 
fibrous roots. The eggs are very similar, viz., a bluish- 
green. 

Like the plain but sweet tempered "home girl" the 
Robin is safelv ensconced in every heart, and dwells 
trustingly and with simple contentment with the "chil- 
dren of men." Of sober tint and simple song, and with 
somewhat plebeian tastes, he hops around our door-yard 
and sports in the meadow, sings matins and vespers 



56 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

on the blasted top of the sheltering house tree, and nests 
in the orchard. What matters it that his voice is on 
occasions just a trifle loud and boisterous, and his man- 
ner sometimes just a very little redfaced ; he has the 
sturdv courage of his convictions and will speak out if 
he thinks he is put upon, but you love him and he loves 
you, just the same notwithstanding. I recall the faces 
of manv men and women that remind me of the Robin, 
and also how little this surface roughness affects the 
pure gold underneath. It is just this very human trait 
that endears the Robin to us. The nest is deep and 
substantially built, composed of coarse grasses, sticks, 
&c. on the outside, then a heavy coating of mud, and 
lastly a soft lining of very fine dried grass, on which are 
laid the six bluish-green eggs. The mud-masonry of 
the nest is moulded into shape against Robin's plump 
breast, ana then left to dry several days before it is 
lined. 

And now what, may be asked, is the first spring 
chorister? The first voice I have heard is that of the 
Shore Lark, but then he is a winter resident. Flitting 
over fields deep wreathed in snow with bright cheery 
chirp even in the dead frosts of January, he is a sort 
of "hail-fellow-well-met" at all times, but does not favor 
us with his song proper until towards spring. Then 
his rather weak but pleasing song (which somehow sug- 
gests the Meadow Lark) is heard on bright days in the 
fields and by the roadside. Presently he is joined by 
another brave little vocalist, this time a returning wan- 
derer from the south. ''JJlicrc-arc-yoii, zvJicrc-arc-yoii,'' 
now comes cheerily across the lingering snow wreathes, 
as spring with the Bluebirds in her train, suns herself in 
sheltered nooks and corners, until the tardy winter shall 
move out and give her possession. If the winter prove 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 57 

obstinate and refuse to vacate until ejected by that 
mighty ruler of the seasons the Sun, the spring (never 
any hand at a quarrel) retires in dismay, and the poor 
Bluebird is forced to fly for shelter to the barn and 
stockvard, and to subsist on an unaccustomed diet of 
grain and dried berries. But cold or warm "Winter will 
not last forever" is the hopeful refrain of this spring- 
pioneer, and soon indeed the skies take on the color of 
his wing, and the last vestige of snow flies affrighted 
before the fiery glances of the sun, leaving the naked 
but glad earth the warm -color of his breast. 

Xot till the spring is well advanced, and the semi- 
hardy birds such as Thrushes. Blackbirds, Bluebirds 
and Robins, have all reported for duty and wished us a 
musical good morning, do the more aristocratic birds in 
their rich liveries, grace the woodland with their pres- 
ence. Foremost in this gorgeous procession is the Ori- 
ole or Golden Robin, jauntily wearing the striking colors 
of Lord Baltimore. He is very indifferent in regard 
to his singing, and though possessed of a remarkably 
fine voice, like some gentlemen with a similar posses- 
sion, will only sing when he feels like it. He sings 
rapturous snatches of melody, hums, chants, and whistles 
at intervals as he saunters around pleasuring among the 
bursting buds and fruit blooms, but never seems willing 
to exert himself to give us his complete song. Perhaps 
he is too indolent to learn a piece clear through, and 
if he is, I do not wonder. Good clothes and admiration 
have spoiled many a singer, and I know I have seen 
Mrs. Oriole hard at work building her curious and 
beautiful nest, while her graceless spouse in his Sunday 
suit and richest warble, sat looking on and "bossing 
the job." Dudes do not all belong to the genus homo. 

The Redwinged Blackbird is another dude, and by 
his red epaulettes, he must be a "Kurnell." His song 



^8 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

certainly has a commanding, dictatorial ring to it, but 
he is much too self-conscious of his good looks to 
suit me. The listener is apt to be under the painful 
impression that the singer's mind is distracted from his 
singing through solicitude about his dress suit, that he 
is afraid of soiling it, or that his neighbors will not 
admire it enough. And so Mr. Redwing ruftles his 
plumes and strikes an attitude, like the fop that he is. 
Not far behind in self-conceit and foppery is the Cow- 
bird, parading himself and his most unmusical vocal per- 
formance before his many wives. Owing to the wide- 
spread interest in the Mormon question our feathered 
polygamist ought to receive some extra attention, but 
really he is not worth it, his song is no better than his 
moral character, so let us pass on to the Rusty Black- 
bird, who can at least sing. I have not heard him 
"solus" but a treeful or swampful singing in concert 
has a very pleasing effect, like the plashing of a water- 
fall. I have deeply regretted my inability to more care- 
fully study the song and habits of this blackbird at the 
time I first fell in with it. as I have had no opportunity 
since. ^= Perhaps I had better mention here that jingling 
versifier of the meadow and the marshes, the Bobolink. 
No merrier songster revels in the spring weather or 
scatters broadcast a more mocking, rollicking, intoxicat- 
ing, delirious, gleeful shower of bird laughter than 
"Mister Bobolinkum." Little but indolently active — 
dressed like a harlequin— a constant singer — he will not 
be long in your neighborhood before you make his 
acquaintance, and a very pleasing holiday maker he is. 



* Since the above was written I have met the "Rusty" in the door- 
yard, but could not determine whether the individual birds had any 
scng at all. The combined intermittent voices of the flock certainly 
produce a very musical jingle, but I could not trace the music to any 
one bird. 




BLACKBIRD, GROSBEAK AND SPARROW. 



THE BIRD CHOIR. ^g 

I regret that I am not more a "son of the marshes'" as 
then I might be able to tell you more about the Bobo- 
link. 

How different from the Redwing and the Cow-bird, 
or even the Bobolink, is the Scarlet Tanager. He wears 
his gorgeous suit of crimson trimmed with black with 
royal indifference; perhaps he has noticed how soon 
such outside glitter fades as his will presently do, leav- 
ing him a sober, dingy, yellowish-green like his mate. 
In striking contrast to his changing coat is the ever- 
thrilling interest of his song even while his tropical splen- 
dor of hue is fading from neck and bosom. Though 
partaking of the general characteristics of both the 
Robin's and Grosbeak's songs, its wild untamed fresh- 
ness and spicy flavor of the woods coupled with that 
.^^trange vibrating undercurrent of mystery and remote- 
ness—the thrill and glow of the poet-nature finding 
utterance — will forever arrest attention, and compel an 
answering thrill. ^Chip-ali' is his abrupt, startled, yet 
withal dignified challenge to the intruder on his solitude, 
and this reserve and strangeness of manner to strangers 
IS the key to his whole character, and is not without 
its charm. While chanting in wrapt heroic strain among 
the topmost boughs of the forest where they still catch 
the departing sunlight, he often stops and utters his 
pensive watchword as if he would sav. "What business 
have you here listening to me," and then resumes his 
song again. 

The Rosebreasted Grosbeak is possessed of a pretty 
name, a mellow sweet song and the sweetest of tempers, 
but. at least in his song, we miss that "spiciness" vari- 
ety is said to give, and so. as he is quite generous with 
his vocal accomplishment, it soon becomes flatly monot- 
onous. Listening to him for the first time, his mellow. 



6o ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

finely modulated notes falling with an indolent ripple 
on the ear exactly in keeping with the balmy, dreamy 
spring weather, one is tempted to exclaim, "I should 
never tire of it." But you would, like my friend did 
of the fresh figs, and for the same reason. He thought 
afner eating the first one that he had never tasted any- 
thing so good, after the second that he should eat a 
good many before he was satisfied, and after the third 
one, wondered if he could manage to eat another. How- 
ever, the Grosbeak possesses good looks, and a most 
useful trait apart from his music, he devours the Colo- 
rado Potato Beetle. 

But what feathered friend have we here? If we 
judge by color this is a '^lualtcsc,'' and listening to his 
ordinary "squcigJi" \\g feel sure that the "cat" has the 
influenza. It takes some little acquaintance to reconcile 
us to such a voice in possession of one of our pets, 
especially if the Catbird imitates for our edification the 
whetting of a scythe in the orchard. One of my inti- 
mate Catbird acquaintances displayed this accomplish- 
nent two successive summers, rousing the hired man 
to see who was at work before him, but this is the only 
sign lie has given me so far that he takes after his near 
relation the Mocking Bird in powers of imitation. His 
ordinary song is a weak imitation of the common Robin, 
and is often mistaken for it. The '^atbird is a Low- 
lander, frequenting river-bottoms, the willow-fringed 
margin of small streams, and the low-lying orchard 
and shrubbery. The nest is composed principally of 
tiie decayed mner bark of the butternut, basswood and 
ash, together with the outer wrapping of the grape- 
vine, and contains from four to six verv bright and 
glossy deep-green eggs. 

Who has not felt that lightsome feeling that brings 
a song to the lips and a smile to the eyes, that sense 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 6l 

of perfect physical well-being begot of good health 
and absence of mental worry that makes us hear a 
benediction in every friendly word, and see a friend 
in everything that breathes ! This feeling we rightly 
associate with the most youthful and sunny-tempered 
of the seasons. Spring. "Lightsome and springlike" 
we say, and with these words will ever be associated 
in my mind the song of the Meadow Lark. Shallow 
indeed is the musician who listens to his song and 
only thinks of jotting it down in notes and rests ; he 
misses it all. It is that sympathetic something, that 
ring of the true metal, that quality or timbre dis- 
tinctively its own, that is precious in this delicious voice 
of the meadow. It takes me back to youthful days — 
the boisterous youngsters tossing Easter eggs on the 
elastic pile of nature's last year's carpet, the troop of 
merry girlhood gathering "buttercups and daisies oh 
the pretty flowers" along the meadow water course. 
Hear the infectious laughter, the girlish scream, the 
boyish shout, and ever and anon a sweet "Ycs-if-is-))ie- 
ihaf-you-hcar' from a yellow and black throat that never 
has a cold ! 

His distant cousin, the Crow Blackbird, on the con- 
trary, always seems to be suffering from throat trouble, 
in fact we will have to suspend judgment in regard 
to his claims as a singer until he has done something 
for that dismal croak of his. 

I may mention the Pewee here among the birds of 
doubtful musical talents, though his lively and em.phatic 
announcement that "I am here and spring is just behind" 
is certainly grateful music to the winter-wearied ear. 
Much the same can be said of his melancholy pensive- 
noted little relative the Wood Pewee, and when all is 
said the one conclusion remains, thev can scarcelv be 



62 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

called singers. Along this borderland of bird-song we 
find the Vireos. Their notes come dropping, liquid, 
pearley beads of music, from the edge of the woodland, 
and we listen with bated breath. The hackneyed song- 
form most certainly is not here, but the sounds are 
melody per sc and could never issue out of any but a 
singer's throat. I know the Red Eyed Vireos best, 
yet have a listening acquaintance with the Yellow- 
throated, and Warbling Vireos. Their exquisite dip- 
net basket nests are the admiration of all students of 
bird architecture, and usually cling to their fastenings 
for two or three years. 

' ' Coo-ayc-coo-coo-coo, 
Thou solitary bird!'' 

In their song time most birds are in one sense 
solitary, and sing alone, but the Mourning or Carolina 
Dove, seems content at all times with the companion- 
ship of his mate, and is rarely seen in the society of 
his fellows except incidentally in the fall on some 
favored feeding ground. There is not a sweeter or 
more melancholy alto voice issues from any feathered 
throat than this, in all our woods and gardens, so richly 
vocal. You think of the half-checked sob and stifled 
sigh, the dewv lashes and heaving bosom of human 
grief while your ear drinks in this plaint sounding so 
full of sorrow, yet in reality tremulous and brimming 
over with a different emotion, that of perfect, satisfy- 
ing love. Close your eyes and listen ! At regular 
intervals with sweet silences between, this epic love song 
of the wordless creation will slip like sleep with a sooth- 
ing charm into the half-unconscious consciousness of 
a tired brain. Sweet song of love ! who would exchange 
thee for the hot intoxicating taste of passion's delirious 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 63 

goblet, sure to drop from the hand ere emptied, or 
remain to turn bitter in the drinking ! 

Time was when the clear whistle song of the Quail 
would come piping up from the ripening grain field 
with the hot breath of July, and when the progress of 
a covey occasionally threading their way Indian file 
through a tangle of briars and hazel brush, could be 
marked by a cheery "ah-Jicc-Jic, ah-hc-hc.'^ ''AJi-bob- 
zvhitc' is seldom heard now, more's the pity. I miss 
him from the straw stack in the winter, from the buck- 
wheat stubble, from the sumach grove. Where has he 
gone? I miss him, for I have always considered him 
a singer, and am sure his little wife did too. I miss 
her also with her toddling brood and motherly solici- 
tude, beautiful to behold. I am afraid the cruel bliz- 
zard and still more cruel hunter with shotgun and box 
trap have banished, if not exterminated him.*'^ 

I cannot leave my fascinating subject without just 
mentioning the brilliant performance of the Oven Bird 
and the Yellow Throat with their rapid and emphatic 
utterance, vigorous crescendos, and abrupt close, and 
their occasional ecstatic fiights in full song a la sky- 
lark. The former's song has been well described as 
"O Teacher teacher TEACHER" for all the world 
like the remonstrances of a boy being whipped, the 
tone increasing with the blows. Nor must I pass 
over the numerous and curious brood of warblers, the 
Chestnut-sided, the Redstart, Black-and-white Creeper, 
Water Thrush, Ruby-crowned Wren, &c., almost un- 
noticed by the uncaring crowd, but a source of never- 
ending delight to the student. Their voices are all well 



♦ * Protected by law for the last 5 years the Quail is again showing 
itself. 



64 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

worthy of a separate description — some of them are 
exquisite — but 1 think I hear the Wood Thrush sing- 
ing, and imagine I see the shadows striding hke giants 
from the western hihs upon our fields and houses, and 
I wish before I close to say a word about the lonely 
bird-voices of the night. 

It is often a difiicult question to establish the dis- 
tinction between a bird's ordinary note or conversa- 
tional tone and its singing voice, or to prove the absence 
of the latter. The Mourning Dove has only one voice 
— that of its song — as the quivering sound emitted when 
startled into taking flight is caused by the vibration 
of its wings. The startled Robin on the contrary emits 
a sharp ^^pip-pip" or perhaps an impatient chorus of 
them, the Ground Robin says ^'chewink," the Black- 
bird '\'-Iack,^' the Catbird ^'sqiicigh," while the Grosbeak, 
Tanager, and all the Thrushes can talk and scold vig- 
orously apart from their singing as any one knows who 
has interfered with their nesting. But what shall we 
say of the voice of the Virgina Eared OwL is it talk- 
ing or singing? It possesses the measured monotony, 
also the necessary repetition of the song form, but is 
it music ? 

''Hoo-i'.oo-Jioo-Jwo, hoo, hoo^' shall say ; tastes differ. 
If it were put to the owls tiiemselves the answer would 
certainly be in the ai^rmative, while the denizens of 
the henhouse might demur. But there is yet another 
suggestion, viz., that both male and female birds vocal- 
ize, in fact, that they serenade each other, which if 
true would invalidate their claims as songsters, for of 
course only male birds are supposed to sing. The mid- 
night vocal performance of the Screech Owd (hold your 
ears !) is similarly involved. Its summer voice is almost 
exactly like the dolorous whimper of the Raccoon, 



THE BIRD CHOIR. 



65 



changing in winter to a tremulous, purring monotone. 
But I am afraid outside of this paper we cannot admit 
the Owds into the bird choir, yet I will not attempt to 
decide, I will leave that — well — to the reader. 




A WELL-TRAVELED THOROUGHEARE. 



From my study porch I have been watching the 
unconscious comings and goings of ahiiost ah the wild 
life of the Glen, Its position is advantageous ; it is 
surely superior to the monkey cage of Prof. Garner, 
inasmuch as it is open and above board ; free to every- 
body, and with no suspicion of the intruder, having 
been built before the furry four-footed prospectors set- 
tled down here. Tis true it is a little above their usual 
range of vision (for which I am abundantly grateful) 
but they can and do see me if they want to look up ; 
and most of them have no need to dread the little twelve 
bore, always at my elbow, but seldom used. The porch 
is perched above the stream — the silvery stream — bab- 
ling unceasingly to each of us in his own language ; 
to me and to the wild, sharp ears out there on the 
meadow, or lurking in the sedge. Between me and the 
water stands a thin fringe of ironwood, maple, oak and 
basswood. festooned with riverside vines. I can see 
through it to the meadow beyond, yet it is enough of 
a covert to attract swarms of warblers, who hunt its 
drooping boughs for insects, and many a squirrel uses 
it as a connecting link between the chapel hill and the 
nut trees along the Simpson brook. \\ e are also forty 
rods from the dwelling house — another feature essen- 
tial to success. Back of the porch is an artist's studio 
or workshop, my brother Charles' when he lived, with 
tall north light, and the basement is used as a stable 



A WELL-TRAVELED THOROUGHFARE. 67 

i 

and chicken coop. Though there are certain draw- 
backs to the stable feature that need not be particu- 
larized, it too has its advantages ; one fcra — the mink — 
would never think of indulging me with his visits but 
for the chickens, and I once lassoed a callow wood- 
chuck in the cow's manger, and led him in triumph 
out into publicity, in spite of his bashfulness. The cow 
and hens also serve as a link between me and the life 
of the woods ; the wildest squirrels and woodchucks 
fear me less that they see my social relations with the 
barnyard ; so you see I am very well disposed indeed 
as regards situation. 

I think I will begin with the woodchuck, as I have 
only to look up from my writing to see him at almost 
any hour of the day. Of all my humble, vegetarian, 
four-footed, country friends, none are so approachable, 
considering their size, as the woodchucks. Before 1 
studied them from my porch I iised to meet them in 
my evening walks beside the brook and in the border- 
ing meadows, waddling along through the grass on their 
short legs, or see them skurry headlong with a great 
show of fright into their holes ; but knowing well that 
for innocent curiosity they would be hard to equal, have 
watched patiently for the speedy reappearance of the 
well-known blunt snout, close-cropped ears, and mild 
brown eyes ; and was seldom disappointed. Once 
leisurely sitting in a rocker on the porch, looking over 
a forgotten volume of the Library Magazine, I espied 
a female woodchuck and one of her offspring, looking 
comically like a lumbering Teuton dame and ''little 
Hans'' in all the unconscious angularity and wide- 
eyed solemnity of that precocious youngster, traveling 
briskly up the stream. I laughed heartily at the way 
the little one exactly followed the path and imitated the 



68 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

walk of its mother; how it rose on its hind legs, flat- 
tened itself on the gronnd, or attempted a sndden 
burst of speed, just as she did. Once she stood as high 
as she could on her fore legs, w4ien "master chuckster'* 
rushed under her belly, and assumed the exact attitude, 
peeping out between her fore legs. I had made Hans' 
acquaintance the evening previous, surprising his 
mother, sister, and himself in a clover field near the 
burrow they were then occupying. The two first named 
rushed home, but poor Hans was taken unawares, and 
his flight intercepted. He let me approach and poke 
his cool little nose with my cane, feebly attempting to 
bite it, but when I patted him on the back with it he 
gave an angry snarl and rushed past me to the safety 
of the burrow. This is surely a favorite spot with 
tiiese Muimals, partly on account of the unfailing food 
and water, but also I fancy on account of the absence 
of a resident dog. I counted five burrows in sight 
from my back porch this spring as the chucks com- 
menced to stir a1)road, not including the one under the 
studio itself and one under the hay shed. One jolly 
old-timer occupying a well-shaded high-and-dry hole 
that I have taken an interest in since boyhood days, 
was interviewed by the rooster and his harem (all new- 
comers but four old hens) as he sat with his head and 
fore paws out of the burrow taking a leisurely prelim- 
inary survey. The flock all tiptoed up to him, inspected 
him gravely, and then settled down to scratch for 
v.'orms in his inuuediate vicinity, j^erfectly satisfied he 
was harmless. The young chucks do occasionally 
frighten the hens by rushing clumsily among them, 
but this is only because on account of their smaller size 
they are mistaken for the dreaded mink. Standing near 
this same hole I have counted fifteen woodchucks, voung^ 



A WELL-TRAVELED THOROUGHFARE. 69 

and old. in sight at once. Wdl, unless they reach the 
kitchen garden they do not seem to do any harm, and 
I delight to pry into their little domestic affairs. But 
I do not attempt to destroy them. Only once; urged 
by the gardener I did take up my gun and had taken 
aim ; when I am on the record to have dropped it with 
the cry : "I can't do it, he looks just like Father James !" 
at any rate the woodchuck was spared. The female 
under the studio has a litter of four robust little fel- 
lows, and I watch them and her with unfailing inter- 
est. Lately I saw her crossing the bridge in the direc- 
tion away from the studio, with a young one in her 
mouth. W'hether she was transferring her family to 
a new hole in consequence of my tethering the cow on 
their esptcial feeding ground near the old one, or 
whether she was returnmg some young hopeful to his 
proper connections, I could not determine. Some days 
after the same female plunged past the porch and down 
the bank of the stream, quickly returning to the studio 
hole with a young chuck in sorry plight; dripping w-t 
and apparently demoralized. She quickly made another 
smiilar journey, and after a much longer interval 
returned with another youngster. What could it mean ? 
Were they playing truant like American little boys, or 
was she "isolating" a case of measles? I watched a 
few minutes longer and was rewarded. A wilful young- 
ster, the "terror" most likely of his family, trotted around 
the corner of the porch, and off on forbidden paths down 
by the water. His wrathful mamma followed him close, 
and he was soon dangling head downward in her mouth,' 
and on his way back. So it seems that little wood- 
chucks play "hookey" just the same as little bovs and 
girls. 



yo ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

Embowered as we are here in the woods, and many 
of the trees nut trees, we naturally have the squirrels. 
The red is rarest, but I have seen one this season ; first 
away back in the winter. It was at an old shed some 
distance off. He sat perched on the top of the open 
door, his tail snugly spread along his back, and his fore 
feet hugging his chest. I approached to within ten 
feet, and we eyed each other long and silently with no 
movement on the squirrel's part but a few shivers, not 
shivers for cold, but just a silent "chicker." At last 
the little fellow could stand it no longer, and he sprang 
upon the roof, and gave a chicker or two, flattening 
his hind quarters on the shingles, and starting at every 
squeal as if it were the noise that was the propelling 
power. But his most laughable performance was a sort 
of dance that he executed with his hind legs only, hold- 
ing on to some higher object with his fore paws, and 
shaking with almost inaudible cachinations. It was 
irresistibly comical. I finally closed in on him, and with 
a furious racket he rushed under cover. What first 
attracted him to the shed was a collection of butter- 
nuts left there to dry. Later he gravitated to the brook 
fringe by my porch. 

My nearest and most persistent squirrel neighbors — 
no less in fact than the joint tenants with me of the 
building — are the flying squirrels. Along towards 
nightfall on bright days, or much earlier if cloudy, T 
will hear a merry scrambling overhead above the plas- 
ter, and perhaps a playful squeak or two, as the scramble 
waxes fast and furious. It is the squirrels preparing 
u V their nightly excursion into the open air. If later 
I sit on the porch after the hens are all quiet on their 
roosts for the night, keep perfectly still and watch 
closely, I will presently see a pair of bright eyes at a 



Jk,J' 







a '^^ 




OCTOGON LOG HOUSE— THECLA AND FAWN. 



A WELL-TRAVELED THOROUGHFARE. 71 

hole in the casing of the eaves, and soon a shadow will 
float noiselessly from them to the base of the nearest 
tree, and tiny feet will be heard scrambling up its trunk, 
though nothing can be seen. From its top the shadow 
launches itself, plainly visible this time athwart the sky, 
and nimbly gains another tree, off on the borders of the 
wood. It is followed by a second, and I hear a sub- 
dued chirruping. I suppose all night long they visit 
with their brethren of the hollow trees and hunt for 
food, but just when they return I cannot say. 

Do wild animals take a summer vacation, and return 
to their old haunts and abode when the weather grows 
cooler ? Something very like it I notice with my friends 
the flying squirrels here in the studio attic. Unshaded 
by trees during the hottest part of the day, the sun 
makes even the lower room that I occupy like a furnace 
in the afternoon, so one can guess what it must be in 
the attic under the shingles. I thought of this one 
boiling day in July, I also remembered I had heard no 
noise overhead for some time back. After listening 
at intervals for a week, I concluded the little lodgers 
had been driven out by the stifling atmosphere, or were 
dead. Only a week elapsed when the beginning of 
August the weather turned much cooler. I was sitting 
at my desk, the squirrels forgotten, when a scrambling 
overhead told me they had returned. 

The flying squirrels are I think the most timid and 
sensitive of our wild animals. I have often caught them 
by mistake in box traps set for grey squirrels and blue 
jays, and they had always died of fright or the over- 
exertion inspired by terror. Their fur is finer than the 
finest silk — as fine as a mole's. At the very opposite 
extreme is the coat of the gopher, or leopard sphermo- 
phile, though its markings are beauti^^^'k It is also of 



72 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

very different disposition, and can be trapped and re- 
trapped without apparently hurting its feehngs, thougli 
it will occasionally skin its nose against the wires if 
left to itself in the trap too long. I have sometimes 
chased one into its burrow, set the trap at the entrance, 
stepped back a step or two, and watched the little sim- 
pleton come out and enter the trap all inside of a 
minute. The chipmonk is not quite so easily caught, 
but it is not at all shy of men. A beautiful little fellow 
has made a burrow right by the hens' entrance to the 
basement, sunk it down below the wall, perhaps for 
greater dryness and warmth. He carries on his trans- 
portation of winter supplies undisturbed by my pres- 
ence, and hunts around for the grains of corn that the 
hens have overlooked almost at my feet. He is so 
industrious and has gathered so much provender that 
I cannot think what he ever does with it all. Over the 
same path from the brook fringe to the hens' door 
conies another four-footed creature, only this one comes 
at night. The morning usually tells the story. Eight 
corpses stark and stiff on the floor of the coop greeted 
mother's eyes when she went to let out the chickens. 

"Oh! Wilfrid, come here, what's happened, the hens 
*are all dead; oh my beautiful chickens; oh dear!" 

The remaining four hens (the sturdy rooster even 
had fallen a victim) almost luney from that night of 
terror, escaped into the daylight and took to the woods, 
as if civilization was to blame for the slaughter of their 
companions. That night they roosted in trees, they 
had had enough of the coop. 

To return to the dead : they had all perished from 
the same cause, viz., a scientific incision at the base 
of the skull into the jugular ; and they were drained 
dry of blood. A fine, almost imperceptible odor of musk 



A WELL-TRAVELED THOROUGHFARE. 73 

hung about the premises ; that, and the pecuhar nature 
of the wounds, and the fact that the door of the coop 
was closed, made me unhesitatingly say "mink." I 
looked farther and found that he (or she) had got in 
by widening the spaces between the spars on the laticed 
division between the cow stall and the coop ; using 
his teetli and then further springing the spars, his 
weasel-like body acting as a wedge. That same day 
as I sat in my study above, I heard a rattling around 
below, and on going down surprised the mink in the 
coop. He had returned for a midday meal, but the 
dead and alive hens were alike absent. I closed the 
outer door as I thought, and rushed around to secure 
the gap in the spars ; but he wriggled silently through 
a crack no v;ider than your thumb, at least he must 
have done, for I searched the nests for him in vain. 
I saw him again not long since one rainy day rushing 
down the bed of the brook past the porch, draggled 
and wet and very innocent looking, but presumably 
viewing the premises for a future raid, as he doubtless 
is aware that the hen roost has been replenished. To 
think that so much blood-thirstiness could find lodg- 
ment in that little body, scarce larger than a good sized 
squirrel ! It takes ones breath away. 

The minks have been harboring around here now 
for some vears, and three have been killed ; two shot 
and one trapped in the coop. But the traps that have 
been sprung, and the shots that have been fired wath 
little or no effect are really confounding. Twice have 
I fired from the porch and drawn blood as well as a 
blood-curdling squeal, and twice have I fired from the 
window at one feeding on the remains of a sacrificed 
hen, but in every case a fiying leap into the stream, a 
splash and a muddy commotion along the bank, has 



74 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



ended the matter as far as I was concerned, and if any 
of them died they kept it to themselves. I have had 
snap shots at them, but they "gink" at the hash hke 
some of the divers, and just seem to enjoy it. The 
tactics of a mink if it meets the hens during the day 
is skuhving and cowardly. The hens at first sight of 
their enemy, unlike their action in presence of a hawk, 
rush in a drove toward the intruder, stepping high on 
their toes and uttering wild cries. The mink retreats 
behind a stump, stone, or brush pile, and watches out 
for an isolated chicken, a young one if possible, and 
seizes it when the others are not there to support it. 

Which is it, Burroughs or Thompson, that asks 
"Who has seen a partridge drum?" "Here sir," I 
answer, for "all things come to them that wait" on my 
wonderful porch. Not twenty rods away I had long 
heard a persistent drummer, and one day I saw the 
flash of his wings as he beat his breast, beat it harder 
than the wedding guest did his, I am sure. I ceased to 
wonder that the partridge breast is such tender eating, 
until I was confounded by remembering that only the 
males drum, and their mates are as tender eating as 
they. This one rose high on his legs, gave I think 
three quick preliminary strokes, and then commenced 
slowly, but with increasing speed and violence, until 
the strokes would all run together both to sight and 
hearing. It all looked very stagey. 

And this reminds me to say, do not imagine for a 
moment that the denizens of the woods are incapable 
of enjoying a bit of stage play. I will tell you what I 
saw apropos of this very drumming partridge. I first 
heard a jay imitating the cry of the hawk, and really not 
being sure if it were not indeed the hawk himself, and 
wanting him for a specimen, I cautiously moved toward 



A WELL-TRAVELED THOROUGHFARE. 75 

the sound. What I at first saw strengthened this 
impression — a squirrel curiously flattened in the crotch 
of a tree, as if to avoid being seen from the side farthest 
from me. But there was no hawk in sight, and there, a 
little farther on, sat the jay, a self-confessed mimic. I 
was about to turn away when I noticed that both the 
jay and squirrel were intently observing something on 
the ground, and going forward (to their utter conster- 
nation and rout) I came upon the tableau that had 
engaged their attention. A fine cock partridge, oblivi- 
ous of me and all the world except a hen of his own 
species that sat rigid and prim in a blue beech above 
him, was spreading his tail and elevating his satiny 
ruft, and occasionally having what seemed like fits of 
semi-strangulation in his efforts to go through some 
yet more comical contortion. Imagine a domestic tur- 
key gobbler or peacock when they have got a spell of 
feeling important, but without the barnyard audience 
that they always have, and you will have a good idea 
of the ludicrous scene. The hen saw me first, and with 
a succession of warning clucks, mounted twig by twig 
to the top of the beech, and flew off. over the hill. This 
brought the cock to his everyday senses, and he par- 
tially lowered his tail and ruff and strutted after her. 

Pretty soon afterward I discovered the hen sitting 
on eleven eggs at the foot of the beech, and the day 
they hatched out I met her a few rods from the nest, 
with all her flufTy yellow-and-brown hatch of chickens 
around her. At her first scream of alarm they scat- 
tered like water thrown on a bundle of straw, and were 
gone — vanished — while yet the retina of my eye retained 
their shape, color, and probable number. The mother 
made a great ado, and indulged in so much high-keyed 
screaming and pleading that I thought she would injure 



76 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

her throat. But I would not be coaxed off — I knew 
better than that, and shpped down quietly with my 
back to a stone, right in among the vanished brood. 
The screaming soon ceased ; then after a season of 
clucking, mingled with a few of those strange, yearning 
wails or sighs, all became absolutely quiet. It remained 
so for perhaps half an hour when her ladyship con- 
cluded I would not move, and the better way would 
be to sound the rallying note, gather her clan, and beat 
an orderly retreat. That was just what I wanted. A 
few soft persuasive clucks and calls, and the little trebles 
piped up "I am here" from all around me (some nearly 
under me) ; they sounded disconsolate, pert and spry, 
chilly, petulant, just as the little chicks individually felt, 
and my heart smote me as one delicate little fellow, 
shivering and unsteadily, struggled along with many 
mishaps after his mother. She waited with wonderful 
patience for them to gather around her, and disappeared 
in good order. 

I then visited the nest. All the egg shells (14) were 
still in it ; their large ends had been removed like a 
cap, and after the egress of the chick, crushed back into 
the cavity. This fine brood you would think would 
make the birds noticeably more plentiful in the fall, but 
I am afraid not. The skunks and raccoons, and foxes, 
and weasels, all occasionally travel this thoroughfare at 
night, all intent on murder and pillage. 

This year I will not be there to see. 

And the stream of sylvan travel still goes on, past 
my porch, everywhere. Who could call these woods a 
solitude ! Who could ask me if I were lonesome ! No 
one, unless they saw less than I do, and I see so lit- 
tle. Would I were Argus. 



•THE ARTIST BROTHER; 



It is now nearly two decades since a son and brother 
passed from amongst us, after a short sojourn of thirty- 
one years. Gifted — as the surviving work of his brush 
will eloquently tell to the eyes of the future; warm- 
hearted—as only his own can tell or would understand. 
If it is fitting that, sacredly respecting his retiring 
modesty (and the feelings — not to be put into words — of 
his kinsfolk) that there should have been an interval of 
silence, a pause, wherein the changed horizon should 
pass into our lives with the survival of the imperish- 
able; yet is it meet and seemly that before his living 
presence here becomes only a tradition, some voice or 
pen shall recall, even if feebly, enough of the beautiful 
in the life of the artist brother, as will give pause to those 
that in the years to come will pass this way, and linger 
to drink of the waters, and rest themselves in the cool 
shadow of the pines he loved. 



The subject of this memoir w^as born in Prestwich, 
England, on the 27th day of September, 1844, the second 
son of his parents ; and as they emigrated to America 
in August of the succeeding year, he made the six weeks' 
ocean vovage and the journey to Milwaukee, Wis., via 
the Erie canal and the great lakes, in his mother's arms. 
Of the two incursions into Dodge Co. varied l)y a shift- 

*Chas. P. Dorward. It was only after Charles' death that the 
family reverted to the older spelling— Durward. 



78 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

ing residence in Milwaukee, and the frontier hardships, 
sickness and privations that attended them, he doubtless 
remembered little, and his conscious existence must have 
commenced along with his unconscious artistic training, 
in the octagon log house on the banks of the Milwau- 
kee river, north of what was then the city, w-here they 
settled in the fall of 185 1. I have been unable to dis- 
cover any drawings made at this time, but as father 
had a studio in the house, little Charles must have been 
familiar with pencils and brushes. Meanwhile, in 1847, 
another brother had arrived, and in 1850-51, a little 
golden-haired sister had come and gone. In the last 
days of '51 the fourth boy was born, shortly after mov- 
ing to the log house at Riverside. It was here in 
1853 that father and mother became Catholics, and the 
four boys were of course baptized in that faith. Charles 
was eight years old at this time. The effect of this 
important step on the lives of the wdiole family has 
assuredly been great, and even the immediate results 
must have been sensibly felt by the three oldest chil- 
dren, for father and mother in the uncalculating enthusi- 
asm of their first fervor determined to voluntarily sepa- 
rate and become celibates. Father had accepted the 
Professorship of English Literature at the newly erected 
seminary of St. Francis south of Milwaukee, and so 
mother retired with the children into the convent and 
orphan asylum of the Franciscans near by. The ill- 
judged experiment w^as abandoned as impracticable after 
about three years and various changes of domicile for 
mother and the children, and the family was united in 
the house at Riverside. North Milwaukee, where Bern- 
ard, the first born, died in 1855. The sale of the River- 
side property followed, and after some delay in rented 
houses, the brick house of the five gables on South 




THE ARTIST BROTHER. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 79 

Point was built. It had seven acres of garden adjoin- 
ing, and was convenient to father's teaching. I had 
seen the hght in the last rented house, so there was 
again four children in the family, all boys. This house 
on the brink of the lake is the home of my earliest 
recollections ; but, childlike, I only remember a younger 
(the last boy was born here in i86ij and an older 
brother and my parents ; leaving out entirely the two 
brothers between. Charles was busy with his pencil 
here, and has left us a great number of remarkably 
faithful copies of birds and beasts from Wood's Natural 
History, full of life and vigorous free-hand work, and 
not unwortliy of the originals — by Dalzell, and per- 
haps the finest series of wood-cut illustrations it has 
been my pleasure and good fortune to see. Let me 
mention in passing that the price of these admirable 
little studies to admiring brothers or friends (as I only 
lately learned from one happy possessor) was one gun 
cap each ! This suggests a probable fondness for sport, 
and as from all I can learn Charles was a healthy boy, 
and as I believe robins and thrushes were considered 
of table size, and the boy's friend and companion 
across the road is reported to have said "If I had $100.00, 
I would buy a $2.50 musket and all the rest in shot 
and powder," the passion for shooting was very natural. 
In later years Charles did not like to destroy life of any 
kind. Without remembering the sportsman, I call to mind 
one bird that I have been told he shot — a grim black- 
brown cormorant — and how he leaped down the steep 
lake bank with a wild cry to secure it. This shows 
how near to nature's untamed heart he was at this 
time, and she was always thus, he was perfectly in 
touch with her unto the end. He also painted in oil 
and water colors while here; shells, flowers, fruit, and 



8o ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

bits of landscape, and among- other things a view of 
the house, showing garden in front, and the distant 
North Point and blue Lake Michigan in the back- 
ground, screened by a characteristic elm and hawthorn 
that I remember well. This was between 1857 and 
1862, and part of the time he attended day school at 
St. Francis with his brother John. During their sum- 
mer vacation in i860, the two boys and father visited 
the Dells of the Wisconsin at Kilbourn, and buying a 
boat at Portage, floated down to Richland City, were 
driven to Arena, and thence home by rail. What an 
outing this must have been for the boys, and espe- 
cially for the one with the artist's eye and hand. I 
think I see many traces of the impressions left by this 
trip in Charles' river sketches of later years. There 
is mention of a stop on the trip at a point almost due 
east of the present homestead, and a tramp through 
Caledonia ; but as I cannot make out that father dis- 
covered the property until later, it can hardly have 
been to see it that they stopped.* Then came the mut- 
terings of the great war. and later the draft, and though 
father was past service and Charles was yet under age, 
he wisely concluded the city was no place for a "cop- 
perhead" and his family of boys. Just how father 
came to locate the "Glen" is uncertain, but the most 
plausible story is that in the following year (1861), dur- 
ing vacation or before, father and his eldest brother 
floated down the Wisconsin, starting from Lyndon this 
time, and stopping off as before, came through Cale- 
donia to Prentice's Mill. Father's brother, Martin, had 
known the miller, Alex. Prentice, in Scotland ; and it 
was through him that father first saw the Glen, and 
later acquired it. This has been already related (vide 

*A mistake: The boys visited the Glen at this time. — Ed, 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 8l 

"Aiilcl Geordie.") The lake shore property was sold 
(the lake had been eating it away at the rate of 16 
feet a year), and we all started for the new home in 
the woods. The journey from Milwaukee was made in 
a one-horse wagon towards the end of October, 1862, 
and on November ist we crossed the Wisconsin river, 
the bleak Portage marsh and the Baraboo river, and 
came on down the valley of Caledonia to Prentice's, 
where we staid that night, not. however, without tak- 
ing possession of the Glen in the name of All Saints. 
Old Geo. Mearns did not build his new house until 
the next spring, and so we could not get possession 
of his log cabin for that winter, but Mr. Prentice kindly 
placed a vacant house of his at our disposal, and we 
got safelv moved in. This house stood on the rising 
ground north of the mill dam, and just a quarter of a 
mile from the Glen property. It was here that I first 
remember my brother as an artist. He had strained 
himself at unaccustomed work in the woods, and so I 
suppose devoted himself more continuously to painting. 
I have a very vague and shadowy recollection of what 
they were like, but his studies this winter were con- 
fined to fruits and flowers, and there were discouraging 
hints that these kinds would not sell. He scorched 
one. I remember, trying to dry it too hastily at the 
stovepipe that passed straight through the floor of his 
attic studio, and out at the roof. Of course I was too 
young to attach any importance to it, but the question 
of ways and means was just commencing to urge the 
young artist towards the land where the painters' money 
grows — the realm of portraiture. A few fruit pieces 
and landscapes were sold, enough perhaps to pay for 
canvas and colors for fresh attempts. Then came the 
moving to the Glen and the building of a studio on the 



82 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

bank right above the spring, indeed the blasting for 
the foundations brought the waters of the present 
fountain to hght, and were used within the semi-cel- 
larhke foundation itself to cool the products of the 
dairy. On a rather insecure support of posts partly 
imbedded in an ill-built wall of soft sandstone whose 
super-sandy mortar took no "band," the barnlike paint- 
ing room was perched ; and the only wonder greater 
than that it never fell, is the amount of work that was 
done in it by both father and son, in happy unconscious- 
ness of its insecurity. 

But I anticipate somewhat, for the painting mainly 
came later. Meanwhile, father concluded that, during 
the summers at least, he would make an attempt to 
subsist by toil of body rather than of brain, and rent- 
ing the adjoining farm to the north, whose owner 
wished to busy himself elsewhere, with the help of 
three boys of working age, commenced the experiment 
of wringing sustenance from the soil — a rather stoney 
and barren soil, too. This was only the commencement 
of our farming experience, for father later on bought 
an eighty of farming land a mile to eastward, built 
a house on it, and leaving the Glen temporarily, com- 
menced clearing and breaking, until he had thirty acres 
under the plough. He varied the work with teaching 
at St. Francis and letting the boys run the farm, 'till 
in 1868 Charles rented it. In 1869 the artist life came 
again to the front, and Charles, then twenty-five years 
of age, went on a visit to England, Scotland and France. 
It had long been looked forward to, but the money for the 
trip had to be slowly accumulated — a work of time and 
patience as well as industry and self-denial. It is almost 
needless to say the money was not earned at painting, 
it was the price of his share of wheat, corn, and potatoes. 




MADONNA OF THE FINGER. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 83 

Charles' contempt for money was as absolute as any 
poet or philosopher could wish, and I distinctly remem- 
ber that he tied his modest hoard in a piece of com- 
mon brown paper labeled "poison," and then lost it in 
the garret. It finally turned up, or there is no know- 
ing w^hen he would have got away. Father had a life- 
long friend in Manchester, and mother's sister and hus- 
band lived not far off, which insured ITim a home wel- 
come to the land of his birth, and their hospitality added 
greatly to the pleasure and profit of his sojourn. His 
route through England and Scotland is now almost 
forgotten, and can only be pieced together and guessed 
at by the sketches he made on the way. I can only 
mention a few of them almost at random. 

There was that most wonderful spiral the "Pren- 
tice Pillar" from Roslin Castle, Chester Cathedral from 
Nt. John's Priory window, and the Priory window itself 
in all the grandeur of its decay ; Manchester, Salford 
and Prestw^ich Cathedrals (father and mother were mar- 
ried in the first named), Stirling Castle and a fragment 
of Roman w^all with round tower and staircase. Among 
the lakes we find Rydal — Derwent — and P>rother's 
waters, and Windermere. The Firth of Clyde furnishes 
a vigorous side-w^heeler under full headway, and New 
Haven a characteristic bit of rock-bound coast, and 
natural harbor. The "Striding Edge" Helvelyn, and 
Montrose (father's birthplace) are mere outlines, but 
the point of view is perfect. There is also the famous 

yew tree in churchyard ; this he elaborated 

into a fine oil study in connection with the cathedral, 
on returning home. There are many more. In the 
galleries and museums he made his first acquaintance 
with sculpture and the antique, and tried his pencil on 
the Three Graces (Canova), Fighting Gladiator, Venus 



84 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

Disarming Cupid, Ruth, and others. Among his copies 
from celebrated pictures were Lear and CordeHa (E, 
S. Ward, R. A.) St. Sebastian (Guido Reni), Head of 
Christ (Ary Schaefer) and Madonnas by Murillo and 
Andrea Del Sarto. I need only hint at the odds and 
ends of an artist's traveling portfolio — the succession of 
sailors, gypsies, fair women, etc., all to ])e worked up 
into pictures some day ; they were all there. In Man- 
chester — where he tarried longest — he did some serious 
work, mentioned elsewhere. Some time after his return 
from this trip, owing to a slight family jar, he discon- 
tinued boarding at home, and retired to the studio on 
the Glen property, where he had been in the habit of 
repairing every day to paint. Here he kept "bachelor's 
hall," worked hard at his canvases, and read and recited 
Edgar Allen Poe and other choice spirits of the somber 
and morbid school. This and the solitude (broken only 
by our occasional visits) had its effect, and one day 
James and I found the studio empty, and a note inform- 
ing us that he had changed his name, forsworn art, 
and would be henceforth undiscoverable. What reasons 
of hopeless love prompted this action, we need not 
inquire. We boys thought it a great joke and envied 
him exceedingly, but father and mother — especially 
mother — felt differently. From him on his return we 
learned that he went first to Summit, Juneau County, 
thence drifted to Winfield, and finally settled down to 
work two miles from Baraboo, and hence quite near 
home. His experiences may be easily imagined. The 
farmer he sought to hire out to doubted his capacity 
for work ; then when he had proved that he could do 
a man's share, some spirit of mischief caused him to 
make known his ability with a pencil, and they doubted 
him still more in other ways. At his last place near 




ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 85 

Baraboo, as he had denied himself the pencil, he took 
to the sister art, and began to write verses. Some of 
these were accepted and published in the Baraboo 
Republic, and this led to a congenial acquaintance with 
the editor himself — Mr. Hill. It was also the ruin of 
his disguise, and abruptly terminated his masquerade. 
One of our near neighbors took the Republic, and as 
"spring poets" were not "as plenty as blackberries" 
until some years later, he noticed the verses, and the 
unusual signature attached. Mother saw the paper, 
felt sure it was Charles, and a visit to ]\lr. Hill proved 
she was right. Charles was doubtless tired of his rather 
aimless, and certainly insipid enough incursion into the 
domain of the ploughboy, and we welcomed him ere 
long back again to his studio. 

Some years of fruitful creative work intervened here 
(I was absent much of the time), the Immaculate Con- 
ception of Our Lady of Lourdes, and St. Charles Bor- 
romeo were painted in 1872 and 1873 respectively, and 
the Madonna of the Sleep, and Stable of Bethlehem in 
1872. In 1874 he painted the set of stations that now 
encircle the chapel. His last original design that he 
lived to finish (Madonna del Colombo) was completed 
in 1875, the year of his death. Sometime during these 
last years he purchased part of the six acres that ^learns 
reserved in the southeast corner of the Glen property, 
he himself excavated and built a stone foundation, raised 
and finished the superstructure even to the matching 
of the floor and the making of the window sash and 
casings, and henceforth, when at home, did all his 
painting here. I am now using it for my study as I 
write these pages, and for a gallery in preparing the 
photo-illustrations. The last time I saw my artist 
brother alive was in this studio, as I was leaving for 



86 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

the city. We had embraced, and I stepped out on the 
rustic porch and hred off the gun I carried in my hand 
as a parting salute, and with some merry word he wished 
me "God speed." When next I came back it was to 
his funeral. 



The earth is bountiful to us here in the giving of 
her fruits. We can go to the maples for sugar and 
vinegar, to the vine and sunflower for wine and oil, to 
many kinds of grain and pulse for breadstuffs, and 
again to the v^ineyard, the orchard and the berry patch 
for all the best fruits of the temperate zone. Out of 
fifty possible food products that this soil will raise, is 
it strange that one should be a rank poison ? It would 
be stranger were it otherwise. But Charles did not so 
believe, he could not believe that this loved soil grew 
anything hurtful, except perhaps the poison ivy and the 
rattlesnake — the one only half believed in, the other 
fast disappearmg. That in his own garden plot should 
lurk the fell destroyer, its outward guise a comely golden 
root, its succulence hiding a quicker death than pesti- 
lence or fever, who should expect him to either expect 
or credit? We all know better now, but that is noth- 
ing. Any one smelling of the seductive sweetness of 
both root and stem of the sicitta niaculata and then pre- 
supposing ignorance, will see it all. He, taking his 
morning constitutional breaking new ground with a 
grubbing hoe on the marshy border of a young orchard, 
stumbled on this root, whose stems were now dead, for 
it was Xovember. Finding it sweet smelling and think- 
ing it edible, he brought some to the house and cooked 
it for breakfast. He repaired to the studio after eating 
and mixed his palette for the day (he was at work on 
an original nth Station), but so swift was the action 




MADONNA OF THE DOVE. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 87 

of the poison that he was found insensible within hah 
an hour, and was dead in two hours. 

Emerson says that "a man dies and his experience 
with him" but that is only half a truth, or less. His 
greatest experiences he shares with us, and gives to 
posterity for safekeeping. We bury the son, brother, 
friend — he that was mortal — but his works and his vir- 
tues, his lifetime's best experience, live after him. 



Though in appearance Charles took after the Eng- 
lish side of the house, in temperament he was neither 
English nor Scotch ; his impulsiveness and rashness 
was more like the French. The "canny" philosophico- 
theological attitude — always thrust forward but never 
interfering with business hard-headedness — of the one, 
or the impassive insularity of the other, were both want- 
ing; but then father is anything but a typical Scotch- 
man. Warm-hearted and unselfish, with a great ten- 
derness for the weaker sex (and he always championed 
the weak), fitted to make any true woman happy, Charles 
never married. It seems to my very limited knowledge 
of a subject that puzzles the wisest heads, that in his 
excessive modesty and self-depreciation he made the 
mistake of being willing to marry beneath the station 
that his abilities entitled him to. and the result was dis- 
appointment and heart burnings and a needless and 
cruel disillusion. The daughters of the people viewed 
his advances wath suspicion or even fear, and instead of 
appreciating the depth of a nature their shallowness 
could not understand, were awed and repelled by it. 
His unhappy love affairs are not worth repeating — let 
them rest where they are — and as I am not writing of 
"might-have-beens" I need not speculate on what did 
not happen, or the chances of a suitable marriage if he 



88 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

had lived longer. Suffice it to say, that to the loving 
scrutiny of those nearest to him, he appeared to accept 
his glorious art as a final and satisfying mistress, and 
that the world is the gainer for this. That Charles 
was a fervent Catholic — a real believer — his acquaint- 
ances need not be told, and the rest might easily glean 
it from his handiwork. Religion (phenomenon as rare 
as his genius) left its daily impress not only on his 
morals, but on his art as well. Fond of books in his 
own way, he is the only man that I have knowm to 
deliberately burn such as he found he possessed that 
had been placed on the "index." This is only a straw, 
but it serves to show which way the smoke flies. He 
had plenty of small weaknesses — though the so-called 
small vices he knew no more of than an infant — but 
he could make enemies quite as quickly as he could 
make friends, and he knew nothing of the word expe- 
diency in cases that touched him at all closely. Yet he w^as 
a most lovable and loving man, it was by not know- 
ing him that people misunderstood him. But how his 
whole soul would revolt at this that I am penning ; 
I will close. His gift to St. Mary's of the pines was 
no less than a life-size copy (without cherubs) of Muril- 
lo's well-known Immaculate Conception — a princely 
donation. 



It is a matter for congratulation that almost all 
Charles' creative work has been kept in the family, and 
with a tendency to be still further treasured in one 
unique collection on the very soil that knew the artist 
and his labors. This is what he would have himself 
desired ; and will be appreciated by all his admirers, 
much as they might have wished during his lifetime to 
see his productions hung on the line in the metropolitan 




MADONNA OF THE STRAW. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 89 

galleries. I'ut now, — now it is different; let the appre- 
ciative and the merely curious make the pilgrimage 
here and see these pictures in this their most fittest 
setting. Yet many will not come, and many more, com- 
ing, still would see through others' eyes ; for these 
I venture with much diffidence on some word of descrip- 
tion, however inadequate. And with this disclaimer let 
me add yet another : In the opinions and views herein 
put forward I beg that the reader will credit me with the 
convictions of the enthusiast rather than of the dog- 
matist, and make other obvious allowances. Unlike the 
modern Miss wdio paints plaques and panels, and who 
never needed to learn to draw, Charles although he 
went to no school of art, or pursued any course of 
systematic training in draughtsmanship except the 
delightfully simple one of continually using a pencil, 
was, even in youth, almost beyond betterment in free- 
dom and ''cleanness" of freehand drawing. This is seen 
in many ways. His British sketches are "sketchy" but 
not in the usually accepted sense of waste lines and lack 
of "finish" ; imfortunately they are mostly studies for 
future elaboration — some of them the barest hint or indi- 
cation — and though as far as they go they are exquisitely 
perfect and womanlike, they are too etherial for satis- 
factory reproduction ; they vanish in the process. The 
one study in oil that he brought back with him from 
England (a pheasant) is a pleasing opposite, and for- 
steady truth and elaboration of drawing and coloring, 
stands among his happiest efforts. The mellow bit of 
w^all and the w^andering spray of ivy are perfect in their 
suggestion of the bird's British home, and the other 
smaller birds thrown in to fill up and balance the can- 
vas are a study in useful unobtrusiveness. Among his 
crayon sketches are a number copied from celebrated 



go • ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

Madonnas and single heads in oil, all of doubtful value. 
To me a copy in color (oil or crayonj of a painting is 
useless — unprofitable — and not to be compared to a 
good photograph, which gives light and shade with 
some degree of truth, and the drawing — the very strokes 
that go to make up the drawing — with absolute fidelity. 
His crayon heads from life taken in England, are, on 
the other hand, charming. This leads me to say, though 
it may be a semi-digression, that he would have made 
an admirable illustrator for the magazines ; his spon- 
taneity, readily kindled enthusiasm and faculty of laugh- 
ing with the joyful and mourning with the sorrowful, 
rendering a sympathetic insight into the author's aims, 
a foregone conclusion. It was one of his dreams to 
illustrates father's poems, and in 1867 he commenced 
Vvith an elaborate ornamental title, and seventeen lovely 
sketches in India ink, accompanied by nearly thirty of 
tlie poems carefully copied oil in his own hand. In 
the future illustrated edition of father's complete works, 
these illustrations will surely find a place. I have previ- 
ously hinted that with a view to making his art some- 
what remunerative, Charles looked toward portraiture, 
in crayon or pastel. In the '6o's he made a striking 
and successful likeness of the miller's son, and received, 
I think, $5.00. He subsequently did numbers of these 
heads (simply as potboilers, and at small prices), but 
as they are scattered over the county, they need not be 
further mentioned here. What our artist could do in 
the way of portraiture with the colored crayons is, how- 
ever, not left to tradition ; the north wall of the Glen 
gallery is wholly given up to a unique collection ; the 
artist, father, mother, and the rest of the children, liv- 
ing and dead, all by the one masterly hand. But por- 
traits, though the highest work of the copyist, give 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 9 1 

little play to the painter's noblest faculty of imagina- 
tion. The "Madonna del Dito" (1869J may be called 
his first purely imaginative design, and it strikes a sort 
of keynote to all his subsequent work, for among his 
comparatively few ideal conceptions, more than half are 
of the "\'irgin ]^Iother" ; and he will be known and 
thought of in the words of his brother and patron, as a 
"painter of ^^ladonnas." This would doubtless have been 
even more true had he lived, for only a short time before 
his death he said, 'T only want money enough to live on, 
and then to paint Madonnas the rest of my life." And to 
those who knew his extreme simplicity of life, and his 
unceasing industry, what expectations would have been 
too sanguine, if it were not that to-morrow is no one's 
to call his own. Since his conversion to the Catholic 
faith father had almost entirely exchanged portraits for 
devotional paintings (altarpieces, heads of saints. Ma- 
donnas, stations of the cross), and as his eyesight began 
to fail, these commissions were sometimes executed 
jointly by father and son, or turned over entirely to the 
latter. Thus the number of canvases that Charles worked 
upon which were practically copies of Delaroche, AIu- 
rillo, and others, outnuml^er his ideal designs three to 
one. Of course original color treatment and arrange- 
ment of minor details could and did creep in, and I think 
that in time the old models would have been entirely cast 
aside, and every station of the \"ia Crucis, every saint or 
sinner, have been an original with the artist ; yet the 
painting of these pot-boilers is to be deplored if they can 
conceivably be credited with keeping his brush from 
original work, and only excused on the ground that while 
"men must work and women must weep," money must 
be earned by the artist that has "no time to grow^ rich" 
:as well as by the clodhopper. 



92 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

The "del Dito" has some things about it that place it 
apart from all his other Madonnas, and still again some 
things that we find repeated over and over. The age of 
the Child — the oldest of all his Infants — and the look of 
extreme youth and inexperience as well as irresponsible- 
ness almost, in the Virgin, together with the cloud back- 
ground, are all without parallel in his other works ; but 
the ornamentation of their robes (purple robe gold 
tracery for the Child, blue robe silver tracery for the Vir- 
gin) and the general color treatment, as w^ell as the type 
of mouth and nose in both, are repeated or hinted at fre- 
([uently afterward. But it is charming even if it does lend 
itself easily to criticism, and though its "breeziness" is 
apt to provoke a smile. And then it is a first work, a 
first tiight on untried wangs ; wdiich, all duly considered, 
will be likely to leave us filled with admiration. And 
our admiration will steadily increase if we follow him for 
the next six years. I cannot say that any marked pro- 
gression is to be noticed from one picture to another, they 
simply all show the bursting of the bonds of the copyist 
(except \vhen the bond is self-iriiposed for some good rea- 
son), in some sense the perfect equality of absolute free- 
dom. I will not on this account think myself bound 
to speak of them in the order of their production. Here 
is one : On the left a semi-twilight vista of tinted cloud- 
and-sunset sky, and a ghostly tall palm athwart it, give 
the atmosphere of the East. Back of the group is a 
wall — mainly in obscurity — at its foot is a hinted-at vine, 
and up by the dim battlement a white dove hovers. It 
is called therefrom the "Madonna del Colombo." The 
chasteness and unity of the design are admirable. The 
heavy-lidded A'^irgin with eyes only for the Child — the 
sturdv little St. John tugging forward into view the pet 
lami:) ; the radiant and perfectly childlike delight and 




MADONNA OF THE SLEEP. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 93 

surprise of the Infant — no discordant note — perfect har- 
^lon^•. The deft arrangement of all the draperies, dis- 
pensing entirely with artificial fittings and fastenings, is 
also to be noticed and commended. And another : The 
scene is again out of doors, in part of the background 
is the supporting wall (this time unmistakably in string 
courses), and it is again the gloaming. Far across a 
dim lake spanned by a bridge whose arches are faintly 
mirrored in its bosom "the night cloud had lowered," 
and the twin palms and the clinging vine between them 
show in shadowy relief. The face of the Virgin is turned 
fu.ri-eyed tow^ards you, and though the back is partly 
turned to the sunset the light falls on the face — an artistic 
license you will cheerfully pardon. The sleeping Babe 
(who gives the name : "Madonna of the Sleep") is the 
niysterv note in the picture. The dark, yet transparent 
shadows on the closed lids, the relaxed attitude (the form 
is nearly sunk out of sight in the ^Mother's lap) w^ould 
almost suggest a deeper change than slumber were it 
:iot for the dream-flush on the cheeks, and the red parted 
lips. This Madonna shows Charles at his best as an 
ideal colorist, and the whole effect is one of richness, 
from the white netted veil that confines the abundant 
reddish-brown hair, to the gold-edged cufTs of the linen 
undergarment ; a hint of wealth that is felt at once, and 
sends us instinctively back to the traditions for verifica- 
tion or correctness. I think this Madonna will ahvays 
be the favorite with the many, though one critic con- 
siders the unnamed one in black and white freeist of 
faults. I, however, feel that his crowning imaginative 
work is assuredly the "Immaculate Conception of Our 
Lady of Lourdes," painted in 1872. I say it well aware 
of the limitations that he himself put to his imaginative 



94 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

flight — the faithful following of Henry Lasserre* in the 
details of vesture — the fiow of the lower drapery and the 
"horned moon" borrowed from Murillo. But the glori- 
fied, wrapt face, and the fervor of attitude, as well as the 
really brilliant color treatment, will, if it escapes the 
deadly damps and heats of this most trying climate, make 
it rank among the "old masters" some day. 

I hinted at the self-imposed limitations to the fancy 
of this design ; these were always a source of strength 
with Charles, or at least were always prized as such, as 
a sort of anchor to keep him from drifting. Notice his 
adherence to the blue, red-brown, and white drapery in 
all his Madonna's, the auburn hair, the classic nose. I 
freely admit that I am something of a Philistine in such 
matters, and see no reason for a slavish following of 
any tradition or convention, as the point to be gained 
is not so much a truthful summary of detail, as an 
efifect ; that can be more or less perfectly arrived at by 
a multitude of paths. The Virgin Mary is, pictorially, 
either a concrete Jewess in features and dress, invested 
with the halo of the Blessed Mother of God, or she is an 
abstract conception of every race and clime, and appeal- 
ing to many artists and many peoples just through this 
diversity of type. But I must not follow this lead 
further, it will take me too far afield. His largest orig- 
inal canvas, and the one containing the most figures, 



* "Her garments of an unknown texture, and doubtless woven in 
the mysterious loom which furnishes attire for the lilies of the valley, 
were white as the stainless mountain snow, and more magnificent in 
their simplicity than the gorgeous robe of Solomon in all his glory. * * 
In front a girdle — blue as the heavens — was knotted halfway round 
her body and fell in two long bands reaching within a short distance 
of her feet. Behind, a white veil fixed around her head, and envelop- 
ing in its ample folds her shoulders and the upper part of her arms, 
descended as far as the hem of her robe." (Our Lady of Lourdes by 
H. Lasserre.) [Photographic processes not giving true color values — 
blue showing always too light— the girdle in our illustration is unfor- 
tunately almost white.— Ed.] 




MADONNA OF THE EMBRACE. 



THE ARTIST BROTHER. 95 

is the St. Charles Borromeo, painted for Rev. Chas. X. 
Goldsmith of Chippewa Falls, and placed by him in his 
church there. It represents the saint as laboring among 
the victims of the plague in Milan. 



Charles' first attribute as a designer is grace; he 
never drew an ungraceful figure. The flow of lines, the 
harmony of contrast, the perfect balancing of the figures 
iii his pictures all betray it. Father, alluding to him in 
'"A Homesick Rhyme," says, "He catches her (nature's) 
secret of beauty, her glow, and her gloom, and her 
grace," and I agree with the first and last — especially 
the last, 1:)ut cannot find the gloom. However, when 
this was written Charles was still a copyist ; from nature 
it is true, but still not a creator. And here perhaps is 
the explanation of something that will be found influenc- 
ing the artist's style all through his ideal works. The 
nature that he had looked upon, and loved, and depicte'd, 
had little of the gloom and tragic element in it ; it lacked 
the irresistible might and boundlessness of the ocean, 
the massive mould and immovability of the mountains, 
the deathly white, frozen silence of the Arctic Seas, or 
the rush of the tropical hurricane. And the same in 
portraiture : a lady sitting for a likeness very rarely 
wishes to pose as the "tragic muse," neither does a man 
want to look more forbidding than nature (liberally inter- 
preted by the artist) intended him to do. It is conceiv- 
able to me that this lack — as I shall call it — might have 
been supplied by study of the antique and especially by 
intelligent and well-directed work in the life schools ; 
but I may be wrong. He had neither, and I am not 
aware that he ever had any leaning that way. Of the 
'"glow" — in other words the coloring — in as far as he 
copied from nature, he was a consummate colorist, and 



96 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

SO his crayons, his game and fruit studies and landscapes 
ill oil, and his flowers in water-colors, are the truth of 
nature itself. Perhaps because his chosen medium for 
p(jrtraiture was not oil, perhaps because his Madonnas 
were not portraits to the extent that they might, and 
sliould have been, to have gained greatly in concrete 
actuality and force, maybe just simply because he tried 
to make the Mother's face divinely fair (which is impos- 
sible) instead of frankly human with divine expression ; 
whatever the reason, the texture of the skin in nearly 
all of them leaves something to be desired. Instead of 
a direct idealized portrait of a wdfe, hired model, or 
sweetheart, such as the great masters were perfectly 
satisfied to give (and where the physical fnttJifuliicss was 
largely their triumph), he essayed to give us an imper- 
sonal spiritual abstraction ; and gave us instead — an 
abstraction certainly, but a material one. But this is 
little, I simply touch on it to give my friend the advocatus 
diaboU no cause to be offended. These New World Ma- 
donnas are unique, and beyond being hurt by criticism ; 
there w^as not anything in the United States Exhibit at 
tlie great Columbian Exposition that even faintly 
approached their peculiar field, and shoals of the hideous 
conventional, race-typical, "outre" productions of some 
of the so-called "great masters" w^ould look barbarous 
beside them. They must be judged beside the very 
best — beside Raphael and Murillo. Then it will be seen 
that they have their limitations, but even so, they need 
never hide their heads in shame. If there is ever an 
American school of Madonnas, I know of some by-paths 
that will be religiously trodden, and an epitaph that will 
not be so much read from the marble cross in the swart 
pine shade, as from the graceful Madonnas of the Glen. 




STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE. 



RECLAIMED rOR A SEASON. 



Whoever has read Miss Gertrude Patmore's 
delightful book entitled "Our Pets and Playfellows" 
— and all boys and girls, fond of pets, should surely 
do so — remember the naive assertion, that almost any 
I'oy or girl could tell such stories as hers from their 
own experience. Now, I would feel inclined to mod- 
ify this statement somewhat. The children of the 
rich mostly always do have experience with pets 
(generally tame ones from the dealer), but among the 
poor, and the comparatively poor, many children 
derive the largest share of their knowledge of furry 
and feathery playthings from books. All except 
those boys and girls who are so situated that they 
can capture their pets from the woods. I and my 
brother and sister were thus fortunate. 

There is something about a wild pet taken with 
C'le's own hands from its sylvan home — a robin from 
t.lie nest or a rab1)it from its huddle — that can never 
pertain to a parrot or squirrel purchased from a store. 
Tlie first exciting incident of capture, the caging (the 
cage is never ready in such instances), the perplex- 
ing question of diet, the impatiently looked for signs 
of more sociable relations, are all alike unique and 
thrilling. And then the unexpectedness, the variety, 
tlte unlooked for docility or incorrigibility of the 
captives! Whatever it is, that papa or the big 
brother brings in, whether bear or wolf's cub, 



98 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

hav*^k or owl, the children's first idea is "let's tame 
it/' Even the fishes, frogs, toads, and various other 
insects are confined periodically (and generally tem- 
porarily) in shallow pools and miniature stockades 
by barefooted youngsters ; and I heard one confiding 
to his mate that he had "caught a stilyard but it 
would'nt stay." What is a stilyard? Well, I do not 
know its proper name ; it is a little black, hard shelled 
insect that swims about with a peculiar kick of its 
four, large, flat, transparent paddles on all the streams 
1 am acquainted with. 

But now about the cageable pets : the first of 
the Glen pets I will describe were a pair of robins, 
taken from the nest before they were old enough to 
be afraid, and fed on a paste of milk and wheat flour, 
which had to be poked down their throats at first, 
with a swab, and washed down with water. This 
was varied by a paste partly made of grated carrots, 
and some worms. The "pips" (as we called them 
from their outcry) throve beautifully and grew so 
tame — or rather staid so tame when they grew big — 
that they could be let out of their cage, and would 
alight without fear on our shoulders or arms. They 
soon, however, began to prefer the trees as a roost, 
and as they cpiickly discovered that worms were to 
be found in directions away from their cage, con- 
cluded that we were, after all, not necessary to them ; 
and that while still continuing friendly, they would 
like to enjoy their liberty. The rest can easily be 
imagined; they drifted farther and farther away and 
finally disappeared. My brother sighted one of them 
in a neighbor's dooryard long after, and it flew to 
him when he called, but refused to be taken prisoner. 
This is the usual storv ; onlv such animals as are 



RECLAIMED FOR A SEASON. 99 

bred to dependence on man can be relied on, not to 
relapse into their old, wild, free habits. The rest we 
only reclaim for a season. 

At the same time as we had the robins we had 
a gopher. Our gopher pet was a surprise all around. 
lie surprised himself by getting caught in a box trap 
set for a chipmunk — his nose, with all the hair and 
some skin off, w^as witness of that — and he surprised 
us by becoming tame inside of twenty-four hours, in 
spite of his years and his damaged snout. 

It all came about through his admiration for dried 
squash and pumpkin seeds in unlimited quantities. 
As long as we fed him those he could not believe that 
wc were entirely bad at heart, and pretty soon he 
welcomed the seed-giving hands even inside his cage ; 
and would sit thereon, on his hind legs, and nibble 
the edges aw^ay from the seed so he could get at the 
kernel. Then presently the hand — the little fellow 
stin on it — could be withdrawn from the cage, and 
the beautiful striped creature examined at short range. 
His nose healed over and became glossy again like 
the rest of his pretty coat; and he fought no more 
with the wdres of his cage. We called him "Old 
Bo.?-ue." But he was too tame ; we tired of him and 
gave him his liberty. 

One day he turned up again in a trap set for blue 
jays. We knew^ him by his nose and his unmis- 
takable, give-me-a-pumpkin-seed air. It was comical : 
through the whole of that summer we alternately 
trapped and released him, and I really do not know 
\Ahich he enjoyed the most, nor wdiich we did last ! 

In the haymaking and the harvest time, young 
grey rabbits come to the front as possible pets. They 
are seldom tamed, but amuse the little folks for a few 

L.ofC. 



lOO ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

cays and are then appropriated by the cat. We had 
one however that Hved with us until nearly full 
grown. Bunny was caught when very, very young 
in the wheat stubble, and was brought up along with 
the pink-eyed and long-eared pets that my brother 
fancied. Grey Bunny grew almost as tame as White 
Bunny — at a distance — but never got used to being 
handled ; of course his ears wxre too short for lift- 
ing purposes. I have not much to tell about him, 
only that he still survives — stuffed — in the Glen 
cabinet. 

Of all our w^ild pets only one did not grow in the 
least tame, and that was my red fox. Perhaps iie 
was too old when trapped, for I know that I have 
often heard of tame foxes. The box containing him 
was sent to me by express, and I called at the depoc 
for it. I was on foot and the depot was six miles 
from home. How ever should I carry it? The box 
and all was too heavy, and the fox cub, though he 
had a collar and chain on, was pretty savage. I 
started to lead him and all went w^ell at first; 1)Ul 
he finally got so tired trying to get away from me, 
that I had to drag him. After doing this for a while 
I became afraid he w^ould die, so I went into a house 
and begged an old trousers leg, and put Foxey inside 
of that, with his little sharp black nose just peeping 
out at one end of the l^undle. I then took him under 
my arm and got home nicely. 

A large cage of stout wdiite oak saplings was pre- 
pared : and when he was gnawing at his collection 
of bones or hopelessly pacing the floor, he exercised 
his teeth on the cage. For he never got any tamer. 
He hungered unceasingly for the woods, and held 
nightly communion with his fellows of the hills, bark- 



RECLAIMED FOR A SEASON. lOI 

ing and howling the night away. But he ate the 
food I furnished him, and grew fat, until at last I 
decided to give him his liberty, and break in a young 
fox hound on his trail. I gave him a reasonable 
start — a running chance for his life — but he was too 
fat. Tlie hound overhauled him, and it was soon ail 
over with poor foxey. "Cooney" comes next. 

Father found him whimpering for his mother 
(who had likely been shot) in the "clench" or "cooley" 
that runs back from the stables, and tapped him on 
the head with a stick. Cooney recovered conscious- 
ness, however, and remembered his appetite when 
brought to, and was fed with a spoon until he learned 
to lap the milk himself. He grew strong and heavy 
as a young bear before long, and was perfectly tame 
as far as fear of us was concerned, though his instincts 
were as savage as ever. One day he came into colli- 
sion with a hen and her chickens, and the hen — as a 
mother hen will — showed fight. Cooney took it very 
cooly, — business was business with him ; — he just gath- 
ered the shrieking hen in his fore paws and com- 
menced to eat a hole in her side. He was dreadfully 
put out when we rescued her from his -clutches, more 
dead then alive, and debarred him from a hunt for 
the scattered and panic-stricken brood of chickens. 
Another time he took it into his head to climb a tree, 
and refused to come down when called. It was 
coming on night, so I took a ladder and went up 
after him. I got hold of him by his beautiful, long, 
ringed tail, and compelled him to back down. By 
the time I reached the ground his eyes were fairly 
green with anger, and when I grabbed him by the 
nap of the neck, it took all my strength to save me 
from being bitten. I threw him suddenly into an 



I02 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

empty barrel and clapped on the lid, and left him 
there all night to cool off. He was as peaceable as 
a lamb in the morning, but we began to doubt if, 
after all, he was a desirable pet amongst chickens 
and children, and so got rid of him. 

Our largest and most expensive pet — one that we 
did not capture — was a beautiful large-eyed fawn. 
P^ather brought her from the city, lying like a poor 
sheep driven to the butcher, in the bottom of the 
farm wagon. At first we thought she was dead with 
the heat, and dust, and jolting, but she was all right 
as soon as her feet were untied, and she was sup- 
plied with grass and water. What dark, lustrous eyes 
she had, to be sure, swept with long, drooping eye- 
lashes. She early captured the eye and pencil of my 
artist brother (he purchased her from father later), 
and the illustration representing our little sister hang- 
ing about her neck is his work. I, too, tried to 
sketch her, but she would not keep still enough for 
my boyish pencil, and I had no camera. Accustomed 
by nature if not by any prolonged experience to the 
limitless freedom of the pathless forest, she did not 
take very kindly to her "paddock," and was fain to 
prove both her independence and her amazing agility 
by an occasional flying leap over the double stake and 
rider that stood between her and freedom. On one 
of these occasions she cleared all the fences between 
her yard and the public road, and started off down 
the valley. I was sent by a short cut to head her 
off, and by means of much barking and shouting, 
turned her back. She came flying into the dooryard 
with her tail spread like a terror-stricken rabbit, and 
was made much of, but another rail was also quietly 
added to the "paddock" fence. Though perfectly 



RECLAIMED FOR A SEASON. IO3 

tame, and apparently fond of handling, she did not 
hestitate to use her sharp-hoofed feet as weapons and 
to compel the gift of dainties, so that sister going 
into the yard without a supply was once nearly 
struck down and seriously injured in this way. But 
our acquaintance with this fleet-footed and intelligent 
creature ended abruptly; the gate was left unfas- 
tened, and she glided off and away over the hills, 
where the people did not know her, and was shot. 
"Yes ! we saw she was tame," the murderer said, 
"but we thought it was because she was crazy !'* 
Charles recovered her head and made a life-size 
head-and-shoulders study of it in oil. 

These were our "very own" pets, but my interest 
did not stop here. I partly owned — in appreciation 
at least — the pets of all my boy friends. Sometimes 
it was an owl that I trudged miles to "glower" at 
through the bars of his cage, it might be a family 
of squirrels, or a solitary black one. One of my 
taxidermist friends had a large out-door coop con- 
taining, at -the time I am writing of, a crow, a red- 
tailed hawk and a large horned owl. They lived 
quite a while as a "happy family," but the owl finally 
made a midnight lunch of his companions, though 
the hawk at least was nearly if not quite his size. 
This impudent performance was equaled if not sur- 
passed by a screech owl. He was caged with a wood- 
chuck that he thought would be good eating, only his 
skin was tough. The owl used to ride around the 
cage clinging to the terrified creature's back, but 
unable to pierce his hide with claws or bill. 

The taming of wild pets throws a side light on 
what will happen when the habitable earth is all set- 
tled, and such animals are extinct as cannot inhabit 



I04 



ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 



it jointly with man. The rest will certainly modify 
their habits greatly in relation to the human race. 
But what will the pet-loving youngster do? 




WINTER AT THE GLEN. 



Who shall say at what day or what hour the 
autumn passes ? 

Like the watcher at the bedside of the departing, 
whose life, rounded and ripe and ready for the Reaper, 
peacefully lingers, after the "fitful fever'' is past, and 
the workday account closed, whose breath, coming, 
going, hesitating, going, coming, until no bent-down 
ear may catch its indrawing, or mirror moisten with 
its outgoing, until — though the watcher knoweth it 
not — life has gone hence, so we look on the landscape, 
the vestureless fields, the naked trees and hedgerow, 
the garnered grain, the silence of the departing 
songsters, the lessening journey of the day-god, the 
deepening night-chill, but are loath to say: "The 
season is dead, it is now winter." 

And how indeed can we know when the sap last 
mounted to the top of that patriarchal oak, before it 
■returned to the ground, or congealed in its cells; who 
indeed saw the last leaf fall. Not till the frost fet- 
t'1's the earth and the water, and invades the regions 
of the iiir, do we acknowledge the rout of the 
autumn, and the grim reign of the frost-king. 

In various guise, in manifold disguise he steals 
quietly amongst us, stormily rushes or swiftly 
pounces down upon us, or is dragged hither apparently 
against his wdll, and all the time protesting that he 
will not reign over us, — not he ! Perhaps the autumn 



I06 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

mists condense into a rainstorm, and the rain towards 
nightfall congeals into sleet, and the morning finds 
wood and field bound hand and foot like a paralytic ; 
not dead, but helpless. At earliest rising we glance 
anxiously at the pines. Ice-fettered, they moan dis- 
mally, and rock heavily to and fro on the edge of 
the precipice; stifif as to their needles, yet with their 
roots seemingly less securely anchored than usual, in 
the but superficially frozen soil. 

What if the wind should arise? The morn would 
doubtless see the pine hill like a partially dismasted 
ship, some slender spar or other splintered and prone, 
and an ugly ragged gap in the devoted fringe. It 
has been even so in my time. A long siege of sleet 
may also so load the branches of the more brittle 
and unyielding forest trees, that the weighted limbs 
are torn with the report of great guns from the parent 
stem, forked and spreading trees are split in twain, 
and our own Lombardy poplars stand, almost bare 
poles, in the centre of a confused heap of lopped twigs 
and branches. These are the days when neither man, 
bird, or beast finds the woods a pleasant highway, 
and when the wilderness howls and growls loud 
enough to satisfy even Thoreau. Or, perhaps the 
naked woods, and the dried, sapless grasses, take on 
over night, softly, silently, without hurr}^ and yet 
with all speed, the lovely mantle of the ermine ; and 
if indeed he has not yet changed his summer coat, 
he will forthwith hide himself. If the flakes are dry 
and powdery, the pines and other evergreens retain 
but little ; but if moist, each pine and spruce stands 
motionless, a white pyramid ; until the wind and sun 
dislodge the snow, and release the almost pendant 
branches. When the sun shines in the morning after 




THE WINTER PINES. 



WINTER AT THE GLEN. I07 

one of these great damp snowfalls, the sight is daz- 
zling; every flake a prism lavishly dispensing bril- 
liants, every nook or dell an intricate fairyland of 
Vv^hite lights and blue, transparent shadows. 

And yet again the snow comes to us as after due 
preparation, and with oft-repeated warning. The 
morning sky is grey, noon and night the same, and 
thickening. It looks like snow. A fitful wind, appar- 
ently not knowing its own mind, gives a few uncertain 
sighs, and dies down entirely. The following morn- 
ing is greyer, the greyness now extending to the hills 
on the distant horizon. 'Ts it going to snow?" 
first, then, "is it snowing?" 

By noon it is surely snowing, but so fine are the 
flakes, that, though the ground is indeed white, the 
opinion is hazarded that it will not be much of a fall. 
But the sands of the seashore are as nothing to the 
billions of flakes that fall, fall, day and night, night 
and day, imperceptably thickening always, drifting 
somewdiat perhaps on the fields and prairie lands, 
piling up inch by inch in the woods. The rabbit, 
the partridge, the squirrel, the quail, w^ill hardly stir 
out for four days and nights ; the rabbit safe in its 
burrow, the squirrel in its hollow tree, and the birds 
buried in the snow itself, with heads and feet drawn 
in amongst their thickest feathers. When the storm 
is over, and the hungry fox or hunter essays to find 
them, they will burst like bombshells from their 
snowy prison house, and go whirring away beyond 
his ken, and when at sufficient distance, let their 
momentum bury them in the snow once more. I 
used to shoot them in their snowy retreats in the old 
days, with only the sunken surface to guide me to 
their probable location. But the old winter blockup 



I08 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

of four feet "or better" is only a tradition now, and 
the ground of late years is not infrequently bare of 
snow until Christmas. 

Our winter temperature here is also changing, is 
beautifully changeable, or most uncomfortably 
capricious as the case may be ; though, incidentally, 
the sheltered Glen fares well in all weathers. First, 
we have the "cold snap" of perhaps three truly 
Arctic days and nights, heralded and guaranteed by 
the appearance of the "pillar sunrise." 

This is the way of it : The breeze, or rather 
steady breathing from the northwest, ceased entirely 
at sundown, and the smoke arose straight and in a 
thin column from the chimney. P'or a while the fires 
in the house seemed to diffuse a more generous heat 
(this on account of the stillness), but soon the cold 
began to lurk in the far corners, to hover around the 
window blinds, to creep adown one's back as he sat 
facing the fire. Outside, the thermometer stood at 
ten above, the stars blazed bigger and brighter than 
usual, and the sharp, pessimistic staccato of a way- 
faring fox on the hills set the farmhouse dogs to 
barking fitfully for a season. The perfect stillness 
of the long night was only broken by an occasional 
terrific "crack" from the shrinking timbers of the 
roof or walls, and the dolorous hooting of a couple 
of owls tov.ards morning. An hour before sunrise the 
n.ercury sank to twenty-two below, — / was not there 
to see it, mind you. The advent of the sun was pre- 
ceded and announced by a pillar of light, that towered 
above his head till long in the morning, and on either 
jfide of him, at some considerable distance, — perhaps 
ten degrees, — stood two colored sundogs. 



WINTER AT THE GLEN. IO9 

It was a weird spectacle. In the kitchen I noticed 
the knives and spoons stuck to one's fingers if they 
happened to be damp, though the kettle was boiling 
for breakfast near by. 

But if the Glen is visited by one or more cold 
snaps during the four months' winter, it very often 
8ees the January thaw, too. Its coming is not strictly 
confined to January, neither is it limited to only one 
way of appearing on the scene. Perhaps it is just 
dazzlingly bright winter weather for many days at 
a stretch, always getting a trifle milder, until the 
earth begins to peep through the snow on the hill- 
sides facing the south, and the stream, freed of its 
ice by the rising volume of water, hurries along more 
noisily down the valley, tinted more or less with veg- 
etable dyes and sediment. The restraining frost each 
night keeps the earth from getting unduly soft under- 
foot, so by and by the snow has all disappeared with- 
out a complete breakup of the roads, or a damaging 
freshet. This is what father calls a "blessed thaw." 
The more common and characteristic appearance of 
the thaw, however, is a landscape wrapped in damp 
mist for morning after morning, a threat of rain con- 
tinually in the air, a stillness that brings to our ears 
the hoarse murmur of the swollen stream, and per- 
haps the stroke of a distant axman, or the toot of 
the many-miles-away locomotive at Merrimac, Port- 
age, or Baraboo. The caw of the crow and the famil- 
iar screaming of his near relative, the blue jay, speak 
of the pleasures and advantages of bare earth as a 
feeding ground for them, but the marsh becomes a 
quagmire and the meadow a quaking bog to the feet, 
and the clayey roads are soon impassible. Then 
comes the rain, rain, rain, and the earth is a mudpie 



no ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

underneath the turf, which by the by begins to look 
suspiciously green. "A green Yule makes a fat 
Kirkyard" mumbles the old dame over her knitting, 
and the frequent colds and sore throats are a 
probable corroboration. How many species of 
birds winter at the Glen? "Perhaps about six," 
ventures the unobserving. The naturalist takes out 
his pencil and gives on the spur of the moment the 
following partial list : Partridge, Raven, Quail, 
Blue Jay, Chicadee, Red-bellied Nuthatch, White- 
bellied Nuthatch, Lesser Redpoll, Hairy Woodpecker, 
Downey Woodpecker, Crow, Gosshawk, Coopers 
Hawk, English Sparrow, Snowy Owl, Virginia Horned 
Owl, Red or Screech Owd, Barred or Wood Owl, 
Long-eared Owl, A\'inter Wren, Snow Bunting, Cedar 
Bird, Bohemian AVax Wing, White-winged Cross- 
bill, Pine Grossbeak, Shore Lark, Black Snowbird. 

But whether cold or warm, winter drives rural 
life indoors, and more especially so at the Glen. The 
semi-weekly mail is the one link that binds us to 
the busy activity that knows not the difference 
between winter and simimer, rain or shine, night and 
day; and we may perchance rejoice that our connec- 
tion with the sleepless modern demon is so slight. 
Here we can peep into the ever-living minds of the 
immortal dead, or dip at leisure into the modern 
arena of thought in the pages of the multitudinous 
magazines and newspapers, or yet study the faces 
in the lire The circle of faces around our fireplace 
has been fluctuating, narroAving, with the procession 
of the years ; now four, now three, now two, and 
again three. But nowhere else can we better recall 
the complete circle of eight, for if we fail to recall 
them with the mind's eye in the embers, a glance at 




STUDY IN PASTEL. 



WINTER AT THE GLEN. 



Ill 



the walls will reveal all their portraits, painted in oil 
by the father. IMostly as children though, — and hap- 
pily — as the dreams of the mother always picture, not 
their maturity, but their childhood. 



The four months, like its snows, are dissipated in 
due season ere we realize it. We begin to turn list- 
lessly from the magazines and periodicals — the lit- 
erature of the winter — and have a reviving interest 
in the tempting catalogues of the nurserymen, and 
the seedsman and florist. Our thoughts are all of 
to-morrow. A whiff of warm rain overnight, a sun- 
rise murmur of brooks and birds, and doubts and 
fears are emotions of yesterday ; it only needs the 
voice of that phoebe bird on garden stake or gable- 
head, or the gleeful frolic of those robins in the 
meadow, to proclaim aloud the inspiring refrain: "It 
is Spring." 




A STAG or TEN, OR, THE VANISHING 

GAME. 



Over onr front window for many years there 
branched a stately pair of antlers ten pronged. 
They had been proudly borne aloft among the oaks, 
carried over Indian graves, dipped to the surface of 
the stream, and locked in mortal combat many a time 
on these very hills by the original fleet-footed owner; 
and since he lost them with his life in the wooded 
amphitheater to the northward, they have journeyed 
long miles, — to ^lilwaukee and back, — and now grace 
my study — a mute but potent reminder of the van- 
ished and vanishing game. 

Looking back a bit we cannot fail to see good 
reasons for our loss. The honey bee, and the white 
man always close behind, gather a vaster and more 
varied store for a more populous and industrious 
hive than sufficed for and satisfied the red man and 
the bumble bee, so the deer, black bear, beaver, wolf, 
wildcat, badger and others either have disappeared 
altogether, drifted further north and west, or have 
become extremely shy and scarce. The birds are 
naturally less affected by the resistless tide of settle- 
ment and civilization, but the passenger pigeons have 
gone, no one knows whither, and some other species 
are on the eve of following. We may spare ourselves 
useless regrets, — their going Avas inevitable — we can- 
not eat a cake and have it. too. One theorv of their 



THE VANISHING GAME. II3 

disappearance says we did actually eat the pigeons : 
but of ibis tbere is small proof. We ate pigeons; — 
I sbot and ate my sbare ; but who that has gazed 
on those interminable blue-grey-purple-violet lines 
athwart the sky as the millions of rustling wings win- 
nowed there way northwest, or that has seen their 
vast breeding camps, can even in fancy see their 
final and abrupt end in a potpie ! 

The Glen and its vicinity has indeed been much 
loved as an abiding-place by all the native fauna. 
Some of the disappeared and disappearing races made 
a last stand here, and all the wild life that yet finds 
elbowroom and sustenance alongside of the white 
man and his outfit are met with on every hand. But 
of some of these I have already spoken ; it is rather 
an epitaph I would now write ; the epitaph of the 
bear and the beaver. 

The last beaver's dam is yet visible (1896) 1)etween 
here and the milldam ; when I first saw it in 1864 
or thereabout, some of the original logs placed across 
the bed of the stream itself were apparently still in 
place, and the long mound of the wing dam was only 
cut down and leveled slightly where the cattle had a 
path across it. Now a share of it has been almost oblit- 
erated by the plough and harrow, and the spring freshet 
or the summer flood no longer rousts out the pudgy 
four-footed engineers, to strengthen their threatened 
defences by the gleam of the lightning. I occasion- 
ally close my eyes and let my imagination repair and 
flood the long dismantled structure, and people it 
with the flat-tailed amphibian rodents, but not often ; 
my thoughts rather wander after those animals that 
I have really seen here, though they appear to have 
gone now never to return. The last recorded black 



114 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

bear was a little before my time, yet I have seen part 
of his skin in a fur cap. But I have gloated over 
the story of the killing, as told by the redoubtable 
hunter and raconteur himself, and can point out the 
place among the white birches close to where the 
chapel now stands. The sportsman was stalking 
some deer near the north end of the fringe of pine 
trees, and though he was sure they did not see him, 
they snorted, and ran down and across the brook, and 
up the western acclivity of the Glen. He guessed 
from this that something unusual had startled them, 
and, moving forward, came face to face with bruin. 
After he had emptied his gun, it became a knife ver- 
sus claw encounter. 

"Our noses were both pretty long, and they came 
rather close together," is what our sportsman declared 
he observed as the bear arose on his hind legs with 
intend to hug, but the knife proved the better weapon, 
and bruin bit the dust. 

The "stag of ten" whose antlers I possess was prob- 
ably contemporary with old Mearns, and was one of the 
band butchered by the man Owls, who formerly lived 
adjoining the Glen on the north. That was a winter 
such as we do not see now: the snow over four feet 
deep on the level, and crusted so a man could run over 
the frozen surface without snowshoes. The unlucky 
deer sank :o the belly at every futile bound, and the 
cruel crust did practically hamstring them. The rest 
is soon told : they were overtaken and their throats cut 
— no useless waste of powder and ball ; butchered as it 
were to make a backwoods carnival. For a carnivale — 
a farcAvell ^o meat — it was in regard to that kind we 
call vension, no deer having been killed, that I know 
of, near here since. One voung doe has been twice seen 



THE VANISHING GAME. II5 

by myself; I started her the first time from her couch 
among the oak sapHngs, and then again saw her feed- 
ing on the fail wheat near sunset. This was between 
1870-75. A stag was killed while swimming Devil's 
lake some years later; killed against the law in the 
summer; its beautiful horns — of fifteen prongs, I have 
been told — stil! in the velvet. This is what materially 
hastens the extinction of our larger game, this murder- 
ing on the si}' in the close season, and the indiscrimi- 
nate, though legalized, slaughter by pot-hunters and 
S[)ortsmen. 

Of course the deer have enemies besides man, the 
wolves amongst others. In the early years a number 
of the Glen flock of sheep and lambs were sacrificed to 
these same uo;ly freebooters, being killed and eaten 
right on the piemises. It was during this time that I 
saw^ one on an adjoining field reluctantly desert a half- 
devoured ewe, as my brother and I and our shepherd 
dog "Don Sancho" appeared on the scene. Although 
Don strained every sinew, he could not overtake the 
fleet-footed grey rogue, and he vanished over the hill. 
This was the last I saw or heard of wolves for some 
years, till in 1875, I think, a pack came down the val- 
ley, and tarried over winter. I was quite close to 
them one night, and their howling entirely demor- 
alized the degenerate successor to our brave Don, who 
accompanied me. One adult and several cubs were 
captured by professional scalp-hunters, and since then 
the wolf's howl is not heard here any more. 

In 1880 or thereabout I mounted a fine lynx. It 
was not captured near the Glen, but some years before, 
as Charles cooked some meat in the open air just south 
of what is iiOAv (1896) the raspberry patch, one came 
down the clet'ch, evidently attracted by the savory 



Il6 ANNALS OP^ THE GLEN. 

smell, and tairied quite a while within easy gunshot, 
screaming in a blood-curdling manner all the time. It 
was too dark tc see it, but the scream was considered 
sufficient identification. The lynx, however, has never 
been reiported very plentiful in this locality, and, like 
the eagles, is rather to be considered an accidental vis- 
itant, than a once common but now banished resident. 
The wildcat has always been our typical representative 
of the fclictac. It has not entirely disappeared even at 
this writing, finding a last refuge and retreat in the 
locks that culminate in the Devil's lake cliffs. Those 
vast rumbles of detached blocks of quartzite, the ta- 
luses of, more especially, the east bluff, are really vast 
labyrinths, through which a wildcat can pass almost at 
will ; and w^iUl pussy has made herself entirely at home 
there. Nothing short of dynamite will dislodge her, 
and — the available supply is insufficient. During the 
blasting at Devil's Nose some years ago, a wildcat 
A\^as startled from her lair far up the face of the bluff 
by one of the terrific explosions, but quickly found 
another retreat. My one personal experience with 
pussy also ended in the lake bluffs, and though I never 
saw her, but only heard her within a few feet of my 
face, I feel I can claim a slight acquaintance. I was 
out with ^:h'j dog after a new fall of snow, and we 
picked up tlie trail a mile to the north of the Glen, 
and as it was not very fresh I started to follow it, 
leading the dog. A few rods further on the cat had 
overtaking a rabbit, and, after breakfasting, had doub- 
led, and started home. With eyes always fixed on the 
trail we followed through the brush for hours and 
hours, till distance and direction were both entirely 
lost track c f . The trail at length was joined by 
another, and the two cats had amused themselves by 



THE VANISHING GAME. II7 

racing up and down small trees, gamboling over 
stumps and stones, and in all had betrayed such an 
abandon as pioved conclusively that they had felt per- 
fectly secure, and were doubtless very near home. 
Then, amongst the confusion of tracks I caught sight 
of one that wrl- absolutely fresh — made just a moment 
before — and il led into a lair in the rocks near by. 
The dog became panic-stricken, so I peered into the 
cave, and heard pussy's feet stirring the gravel as she 
descended dreper into it. The dog stood beside me 
barking and bristling and frothing at the mouth, but 
could not be induced to enter. The hunt was evi- 
dently over; the next question was, where were we? 
I mounted to the nearest rising ground and climbed 
a tree, and iound we were on the north face of "east 
bluff" Devil's Lake, and some miles from where I 
supposed we were. The wearisome tramp home 
extinguished temporarily much of my interest in the 
wildcat, and as my hunting days are now over, it is 
some years since I saw the track of one. 

It has come to my ears lately that the badger has 
almost entirely disappeared. It has never been any- 
thing but rare here in my time, and indeed I have 
never been in a locality where it was common, and 
have never seen one alive in its native freedom, thous-h 
I have mounted several. The only one I have record 
of for this vicinity, Avas killed on the Glen property 
by a neighb(K-"s dog in the seventies. As the badger's 
skin is not valuable, and as the beast is perfectly 
harmless, ^"t seems strange to me that it should not 
find a retreat in the considerable sand barrens of the 
state, but I suppose the cutting away of even the 
indift'erent grey pine and black oak scrub for fire- 
wood has caused it to retire to safer solitudes. 



Il8 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

A queer procession passing in review before my 
mind's eye, is that of the birds and beasts I have seen 
just once perhaps, long years ago. The two pelicans 
on the Portage marsh, — one white, one cream-colored, 
— the gracefully sailing and circling swallow-tailed 
kite, with the sun gleaming on his snowy head, the 
three bald eagles hovering over the tamarack swamp, 
the pair of g;igantic owls that I hunted for an entire 
summer without securing either a shot at or an identifi- 
cation, though I learned to imitate their strange cry, 
and had decoyed one to my very feet in the thicket 
where I was hiding, the vigilant and unapproachable 
pileated Avoodpecker, that darted from pine to pine 
ahead of me as I breathlessly followed it, are some of 
them. 

Then there was a season or two when the gos- 
hawk was our commonest bird of prey, and I shot 
and mounted some fine specimens; there was a sea- 
son of black squirrels, and again a winter, Avhere in 
a certain locality the American raven, "rare east of 
the Mississippi," superceded the common crow, and 
I secured seven successful shots ; but these all might 
only be the result of little understood and eccentric 
migration. One winter the Bohemian waxenwings 
visited the Glen in large numbers, another, the pine 
grosbeaks, still another the crossbills. The sportsman 
may smile .it my list of game, but let him smile ; they 
will all be game some day; I do not forget the changed 
status of the squirrel and the rabbit, or that when 
we first shot and ate squirrels in the sixties, our 
neighbors remarked that they would just as soon eat 
rats. 

There are two or three points to be kept in view 
when speculating on the obvious, and the possible 




GENERAL VIEW OF GLEN. 



THE VANISHING GAME. 



119 



survivals, viz., fecundity, cunning, and adaptability to 
changed conditions of environment. Thus the fox and 
the crow still remain with us and thrive; the rabbit 
and the woodchuck, though the most timid of beasts, 
and the former an easy prey to gun, tooth, and claw, 
are in no danger of extermination ; and the clifif swal- 
lows, far from regretting rocky ledge or hollow tree, 
has now no instinct, even, for anything but the eaves. 
A wonderful study it is, this survival of some and 
extinction of others. Certain it is that the strength 
of rhinoceros and elephant, the fleetness and incred- 
ible numbers of the passenger pigeon and the spring- 
bok, the comparative insignificance of the quail, avail 
them nothing. Change, change ; even the complexion 
of the deep sea fisheries is changing. 




SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. 



Today I took a long walk along a route well trav- 
eled in my trapping and hunting days, but which since 
then has been unvisited, though close at our doors. 
As I crossed the boundary line and entered the unused 
road, I noticed, together with its increasing narrow- 
ness, that it was crossed at intervals by dead saplings, 
sometimes in considerable numbers. Examining their 
butt ends I saw that they had not been cut down but 
had been grubbed out — yes — literally grubbed out, by 
the hand of time, after having been strangled by the 
growth of their kindred. The young woods were full 
of these perished weaklings, and they had all died since 
last I set foot amongst them. This was in a summer 
midnight, and I was crossing from the other way, feel- 
ling my way from trunk to trunk in pitchy darkness, 
guided only by my sense of direction and the dip of 
the land underfoot. I had been down on the river with 
my brother and on the return trip the current and the 
absence of a favorable breeze had baffled our boatman, 
so that when we reached these woods — at least when 
we entered them— no light reached us from the sky. 
I piloted the way through all right, however, and on 
coming out on the Glen side was guided by the murmur 
of the brook. 

On this trip today as I approached the opposite 
dip of the ridge a smoky shimmer through the trees 
brought me to a realization of a new clearing, and 



SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. Ill 

through it, to the right, straggled a lately made and 
used road, leading to the hills. It was going nearly 
my way, so of course I followed it. On its way it 
passed near a hollow tree that used to shelter the 
diurnal sleep or meditation of a Virginian-eared owl; 
he was not at home, however, had probably moved for 
the benefit of his health and change of air. The road 
finally led me to a broad plateau ; the last time I had 
seen it heavily wooded with oak, now an oat field 
fenced w^ith barb wire. It was the brow of this plateau 
that was my destination ; where the huckleberries used 
to grow ; where I used to flush the feeding partridges, 
and once came on a pair of lovers, oblivious alike of 
the fine Anew, of me, and of the berries. Where are 
they all now ? The lovers have been married, 
divorced, married again, finally shipwrecked ; there 
remains not a vestige of the huckleberry patch, so the 
partridges do not return ; only I return to admire the 
smoky view of the valley which still remains the same. 
A rocky gully that gives off southward from the table- 
land is next visited. It used to contain a small cave 
or wolf's den that I have crawled into many a time 
when I was small enough to squeeze through the nar- 
row entrance, turn round inside with a feeling that I 
was doing great things, and then make a hurried exit 
for fear the wolf or wildcat w^ould catch me. Today, 
though I found the butternut that used to shade the 
entrance, the cave itself had vanished. The rocky 
well, cave and all, had been quarried away to build a 
huge barn in the valley, and the briars, and dewberries, 
and black raspberries sprawled all over the ruins. 
And this has all happened as it were since yesterday ! 
If I were to come back here forty years from now (I 
Avould then be only my father's age), what would I 



122 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

find that I could extend a hand to and say, '*I used 
to know you"? This led me to thinking of other 
changes and survivals, some of them strange enough 
to a backv^ard view of even thirty years ; full of spec- 
ulation to a most casual forward view. The race evo- 
lution of a neighborhood, the social evolution, the 
future, all appealed to me, all demanded consideration. 
Consider it, when father beached his boat on the Wis- 
consin river's wild bank and hid his oars in the sedge 
in '60, the first human figure that greeted his eyes as 
he mounted the rise toward civilization was the stal- 
wart bulk of a tartan clad Scot outlined against the 
sunset glow. Father's broad accent has long since 
been educated away (if he ever had any), but it must 
have seemed homelike to come upon the tartans, and 
hear a rough but hearty voice "speering" after his 
wants and destination. The sturdy clansman offered 
to be the guide himself, saying, — 

'T'm afeard ye'll no make it oot onless I gang wi 
ye," and the three-mile tramp in the gloaming to^ 
Prentice's was made in his company. 

When they reached there the miller and his family 
were all in bed accordmg to good country custom, but 
when Martin D. spoke a head was thrust out of a win- 
dow and the miller exclaimed joyfully, — 

"Man, how is it I ken that vice sae week" 

And so it was all around, the name of the town- 
ship and postofhce betrayed it, the names of the chil- 
dren — Alec, Sandy, Jeanie. When we all finally 
reached the neighborhood to make it our home, and 
our old mare Nell was in need of hay, David (long a) 
B. supplied the want, remarking, — 

"It's guid hei, tak a lock o't and gie it to the 
powny." 



SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. 1 23 

Yes, the whole valley was tenanted by Scotia's 
sons ; there were Irish to the west of us on the flinty, 
Stony ridge towards Devils Lake, and there were Ger- 
mans around somewhere I suppose, but they have 
absolutely no place in my earliest recollections of that 
time. Later, when Adam B. moved away, J. G. S. 
came into his house. A mutual love of flowers (who 
do love flowers and kitchen gardens like the German 
women?) brought I\lrs. S. and myself together, and a 
visit to her window garden, and the triumphant return 
with a pr.X'ious slip, are among my boyish red-letter 
days. We were living on the farm then, and the Glen 
was tenantless. Our two nearest neighbors. Sailor B. 
and Old Man S., were "old salts" who talked of Ivor 
McKivor and had made intimate acquaintance with 
ship's rum and select vocabulary, which they trans- 
lated into a jug of "McGinn's best" from Portage, and 
the local forms of profanity for present everyday use. 
And though they had sailed the seas together for many 
years, and had settled adjoining each other, they were 
constantly quarreling, and brought up their children 
to the same pastime. What stories they told of each 
other to sympathetic or malicious listeners ! AVhat 
stories they told of themselves — these last the more 
incredible. 

B — 's property lay alongside of ours, so father had 
a good chance to know^ him for just what he was. He 
had the reputation of being the bully of the neighbor- 
hood, of being able to brag the loudest, drink the most 
Scotch whiskey and still preserve the perpendicular 
(always expecting his brother Duncan) to set the pace 
in profanity, use of tobacco, number of rows he was 
in, and general nerve — he had been known to say that 
he had nerve enough to hang his own father. And 



124 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

he was of fine appearance ; six feet tall, coal black 
beard, a commanding- presence, and a basso profundo 
voice. 

And what a worker ! 

Many acres of trees and saplings had indeed to bow 
beneath the sturdy stroke of his grub hoe, wielded with 
bare bronzed arms through the hot summer. But the 
science of farming was in its infancy among the bulk 
of these Scotch tillers of the soil, that had come from 
the sea, and the factory, and an entirely different set 
of conditions, to raise wheat and corn in a strange soil 
and new country. Little they studied the varied crops 
and careful rotation, the intelligent subsoiling and 
fertilizing, that alone assure a crop to their successors ; 
but then the land was new and generous and the sea- 
sons were better. Poor old S. had planted spring 
wheat on the same patch successively for thirteen 
years — just think of it! Now no single bushel of 
spring wheat is grown in all this fertile valley, and no 
farmer worthy of the name plants over twice in suc- 
cession the same crop on the same field. 

And there was the miller, father's first friend in the 
neighborhood, he experimented at farming; he and his 
large family of boys. The success of the experiment 
can be vaguely judged from his answers to a number 
of queries as to whether farming paid. 

Did wheat pay? 

"Losh man no; it might if it were no for the rust 
and the chinch bugs, and the smut — and aint it keri- 
ous, all my wheat last year was No. 3 and 'rejected' — 
no, wheat don't pay." 

Does corn pay? 

"No, not as well as wheat ; you see it brings no 
price, for peoj)le won't eat much of it, and it is no use 



SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. 1 25 

here except to fat hogs. But, man, it is the food staple 
of this country if the people only knew it." « 

How's hogs ? 

"They eat more than they's all worth — that is if you 
feed them — if you let them run they break into your 
neighbor's crops ; no, hogs never paid." 

Chickens? 

"Man aint it kerious, eggs sell for a cent apiece, and 
I figured up that if you buy your hens, count what the 
skunks, hawks and minks kill, and pay market prices 
for grain, the eggs w411 cost you five cents apiece by 
time you get them to market.' 

What does pay then? 

"Nothing seems to pay its 'lane, taken all together 
they pay." 

Is this philosophical wisdom, or arithmetical folly? 

However, the genial miller lost his fine farm and 
the mill that was the pride of his heart, and went 
West, so I doubt if even ''taken all together" they 
paid him. 

And whether farming paid them or not, how the old 
Scotch settlers are scattered to the four winds ! David 
B. and old S. have both gone on their last long cruise, 
so have T. and C. and B — e and F. and Daddie R. 
How picturesque they were in many ways, beside the 
newer generation ! C, crusty and dogmatic, referring 
to one of his neighbors "wadna care if he'd tak tellin, 
Init he'll no tak tellin," B. shrewd and philosophical, 
with sons at college always drawing on their father's 
purse, declared, "It's all w^eel ennugh while bairns 
soock their mither, but when they begin to soock their 
father ( Inroad a) it's na sae guid." 

There was something tragical yet droll too about 
T. and his story. With one of the first pick farms of 



126 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

the valley and the biggest barn of any of his neighbors, 
he could jiot see a clevis or log chain within reach of 
his hand as he passed along the road (so it was said) 
but he ''lifted" it, transferred it to the safety of his 
own wagon box. These things gradually found him 
out, and his reputation was rather spotted. He sold 
father a fine looking ram, but a ram that was mortally ' 
sick at the time and died soon after. But even the thief 
and rogue is susceptible of flattery, and likes to stand 
well with sonic one. Father went to him and said, 
*'Now T., whether justly or unjustly, you have not the 
best of reputations, they say you knew that ram was 
sick, give me another one and I shall let it be known 
to your credit." 

T. did it! 

Things did not thrive with him, though, even after 
this temporary return to the straight path, and he 
bethought him to burn his house for the insurance. 
But he overreached himself through greed of saving, 
he moved his things out first, and this was proved on 
him, so he had to go to jail if no one would go his 
surety. Crying like a big soft boy, he sought Daddie 
R. and begged him to be his bail. 

"No T.," said Daddie, 'T might have done it, but 
since that trick of the bees, I have done with you." 

It seems that Daddie had bought some swarms 
from T. but was to let them stand until fall before mov- 
ing them. They were quite heavy with honey when 
he purchased them, but when he called for them, lo ! 
they were exceedingly light. Now whether T. or 
neighboring swarms had been the robbers does not 
appear, but Daddie thought he knew whom the shoe 
fitted (he had a foot of nearly the same size himself). 
Yet he did bail T. out, and took (he was a money 



SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. 12/ 

lender) an ironclad mortgage on the big barn and the 
beautiful farm sloping to the south, just south of us. 
It all slipped from him as a matter of course into the 
clutches of Daddie, and two yankees became the ten- 
ants or purchasers. 

It was in their time that the big barn burned. They 
were just finishing threshing, "cleaning up'' as they 
call it. The fluffy, featherly strawpile stood close to 
the north side of the barn, which was stored with hay, 
and also had just received the newly threshed grain 
into its bins. They were gathering up the chaff and 
spilled grain that lay around the separator, and feeding 
it into the fiercely revolving cylinder, that, only half 
satisfied, was giving out an ominous hum. All at once 
fire darted out of its heated jaws into the chaff under- 
neath. The wheels and tongue of the machine stood 
in the way of the men stamping or rolling it out, and 
in an instant more it had spread to the tindery straw 
pile. Then there was a commotion. Some cut loose 
their teams from the power, others rushed to save the 
grain and stock in the barn. Endowed with sudden 
strength comparatively weak men grabbed up heavy 
barrels of barley and staggered out with them. But 
their work was soon over, the fire drove everybody 
out ; the little Yankee farmer Avhat with the excite- 
ment, heat and smoke was prostrated, and the hands 
lay down on the sward to windward and watched it 
burn. It was a grand sight to my boyish eyes. The 
light pine roofing and clapboards burnt off like so 
much paper, and there stood the massive oak frame- 
work, a skeleton of fire against the background of 
smoke. For three days the hay now smoldered, then 
the massive stone foundations were temporarily roofed 
over, and the unhoused stock came back to their stalls. 



128 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

The Yankee was succeeded by a younger brother 
of J. G. S. ("Come lately" they dubbed him), and the 
evolution went on. We sold the farm and returned 
to the Glen. The purchaser was a German. Sailor B. 
finally sold and moved out of the township. When he 
was going one of his friends said to him, ''Well B., 
I'm d — m glad you're going, the neighborhood will 
have some peace now." I believe that what drove 
him away was that all his old antagonists were either 
dead or had moved away and he felt lonesome. His 
brother Duncan — the hardest of hard drinkers — also 
left on a longer journey; what firewater had failed to 
do ordinary ditch water accomplished. He went to 
town, and not returning, search was made for him. 
As he had stabled near the canal, the water was drawn 
off, and there he was, standing upright with his boots 
fast in the mud and a pipe in his mouth ! 

Yet our neighborhood was in many ways a moral 
one. No tale of murder, highway robbery, or illegiti- 
macy reached my boyish ears, and many the tales of 
honesty, kindness of heart and high principle. From 
my own knowledge it certainly was not an unkindly 
neighborhood. Through a long winter of suffering 
caused by a runaway accident, old S. treated father 
with the rough surgical skill he had picked up cruising 
around the globe, and indeed all the neighbors were 
kind. The curse of the neighborhood was its petty, 
noisy quarrels about roads, division fences, strayed 
stock, and most of all the groundless quarrels caused 
by drink. That is happily past, the later generation is 
a sober one. 

But in the old days nearly everybody (except the 
poor wives) was disposed to see the jolly and pictur- 
esque side of coming home from town "with a long 



SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. 



129 



sled— none of your confounded bobs— and a full horn 
(hie) singing and drinking all the way." And the 
men who drank had an instinctive dislike and distrust 
of those that did not, so when the humane miller tried 
to separate two drunken combatants, they soberly 
joined issues in a common cause, and pounded him for 
his interference. I am afraid tUat I give the impres- 
sion that those old times were pretty ''tough"; this is 
because the picturesque rowdy element lends itself 
more easily to a pen picture than the sweet, unselfish, 
retired life, without noise or notoriety. There were 
plenty of such. I bethink me of Jeanie M. and her old 
blind father, though her story is quite as sad as it is 
sweet and wholesome. The old man was the same that 
w^ore the tartans in the earlier days. I used to pass 
his door going to the river for clam shells. Jeanie 
never would marry, but staid to take care of her father. 
After many years of this loving, self-sacrificing service, 
she, on her way home from a long walk, feeling very 
tired, lay down on the damp grass and went to sleep. 
She awoke feeling stiff and chilled, but managed to get 
home and went to bed without telling anyone. Pneu- 
monia came on, but the childish old man had not wit 
enough to call in help, and if a chance passer had not 
heard her sobbing, she would have died absolutely 
neglected. As it was it was too late to save her. Poor 
Jeanie! after your life of noble self-sacrifice, to miss 
a like ministration at last! The old man, demented 
and incoherent from this loss that he could feel but not 
understand, soon followed her. 

How death aids and abets all changes ! Only a few 
of the pioneers remain. R., the irrepressible phrenolo- 
gist and stump-speaker, F., weighted down with years 
but the soul of uprightness, L., McK. It was R. 



130 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

who, in the old days long before we came, shot a black 
bear near where the grove of white birches stands on 
the chapel hill, and it was McK. that caught me shoot- 
ing blackbirds on his place, and put a sensation into 
my spindly legs that I have never quite experienced 
since. But both of these are fast severing the ties that 
bind them to the valley in favor of new ties in town. 
The remaining pioneers are indeed few. But their 
children remain, do they not ? Are not these their 
children's children that throng the schools? No, they 
are the children of the later comers — the Germans. 
Verily they must be blessed according to the beatitude, 
at any rate they possess the land, or are fast acquir- 
ing it. 

How the Germans captured this neighborhood is 
only one small paragraph in the chapter written by 
Hamlin Garland and others, that will go to make up 
the great book of race evolution in this and other 
countrysides. First they found their way to the odd 
lots, the stray forties, the overlooked or doubtful look- 
ing government holdings, where they raised a log-and- 
mud cabin, some wattle fences and pens, and lived — 
no one exactly knew how — but live they did, and pros- 
pered. Then they slowly bought out first one and then 
another of the dissatisfied, the shiftless "poor whites" 
of the sandy localities (our representatives of the 
Georgia "crackers"), the lone wives that wished to 
move to town, the old people. Bye and bye their areas 
grew larger ; they acquired the finest farms, S — 's 
sturdy and industrious sons helping each other to farm 
after farm, until they now own and work to advantage 
the largest and choicest acreage in the valley, and are 
said to have their eyes on the rest. And the old Scotch 
settlers' sons that have remained have married German 
wives. 




PINE CONE FOUNTAIN. 



SURCEASE AND SURVIVAL. 



131 



Wonderful is this race, the coming race in the 
country's agriculture. Look at the persistence of the 
race-type, still visible to the third and fourth genera- 
tion ; look at their universal race pride, large enough 
to include in its hearty approval everything German. 
The poorest exult in their great men, the great glory 
in every one of their millions of sons, even the most 
lovely and insignificant. Every German feels that he 
must succeed in life — he owes it to the fatherland. He 
even feels that failure is impossible, for is he not a 
German? But he is getting infected by the American 
unrest and "drive"; he forgets almost the social side 
of his nature, so much cultivated in the land of his 
fathers; he forgets and neglects his race's sacred 
heritage of song. Perhaps when he has time to take 
a rest he will think of these things ; but will he ever 
rest? Picturesque he is not either in dress, feature, 
or in his endless toil, but perhaps he will evolve, still. 
something new and beautiful. 



•^ 



POSTSCRIPT. 



I have heralded the return of the birds, have 
attempted (none too well) to translate their songs, 
have beckoned you into the misty past, and hoped 
with you of the future, and the delightful, rambling, 
holiday task is nearly done : one more ramble 
together and we will say "good bye." 

Ah ! a carriage is just drawing up on the high- 
way to enquire the way into the Glen. It is right 
here, right in at this gate and then turn to the left. 
(It may be mentioned here that two and one-half 
acres in the northeast corner of the original forty 
belongs to the chapel and graveyard, and the gate 
here mentioned opens into the chapel property at the 
northeast corner.) A sudden dive down into the 
grove, and then a gentle ascent, brings the prancing 
bay to a sight-seeing pace, and the first glimpse of 
the place is caught by the eager occupants of the car- 
riage. On the right stands the fringe of ancient pine 
trees crowning the rocks, on the left is the chapel, ten 
feet higher up, and almost hidden by the younger 
growth of pines and some graceful white birches. 

But what is that hideous brown band encircling 
the slender waist of one of these last maidenly trees? 
It is the fell sign-manual of a nineteenth century 
descendant (very much descended) of the Vandals. 

To think that anyone could be so cruel as to skin 
this beautiful white-wrapped creature alive and then 



POSTSCRIPT. 133 

leave it to perish ; — as it surely will in time. His 
little soul coveted that bit of bark; "Lead us not into 
temptation" ; young men, and maidens too, leave your 
pen-knk'es at Jioiiie. Another white object gleams 
among the green, a marble cross marking the resting 
place of Charles P. D., the artist brother. Lifting 
your eyes from the grave they discover the gable end 
and door of the chapel. You continue down the nar- 
row road still skirtin* the cemetery, to the foot of the 
chapel hill, catching fleeting glimpses through the 
trees of the lower meadow land and the homestead. 
At the southern foot of the chapel hill you had best 
tie up your horses, and then almost doubling back on 
your track, only this time under the lee of the hill, 
you follow up the stream, that will guide you to the 
cool recesses of the Glen. You quickly come to the 
Juniper ledge ; look, and graciously admire if it so 
please you, but forbear — its trimming has been 
attended to. I notice here that the presumable sports- 
men of the party are eyeing the cool reaches of the 
little stream under the weeping willows with inter- 
rogatory glances. Yes. there are plenty of trout — it 
was stocked in the '70s, and — I hesitate to say it — 
there are some silver spoons and other things in the 
house too, but I am sure that not one of you would 
even borroic these last without our leave. But I will 
have done ; I will say no more ; except to murmur 
apologetically "I was not always thus." 

The strip of lawn running down here to the mouth 
of the Glen between the hill and the stream was at 
one time our kitchen garden, and all the trees and 
shrubs — even the large pines and cedars, and the tow- 
ering Balm of Gilead away back near the horses — are 
of father's planting. On the Pulpit Rock since 1892 



134 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

stands a statue of the Virgin and Child after Deger. 
Before entering the Glen let me ask, "Are you 
thirsty?" If so, cross the stream to the Fountain, a 
massive gothic arch of many-tinted blocks of marble, 
relieved by two of our own Lake Superior brown- 
stone, and surmounted by a sculptured pine cone. 
You will read the inscription within, "Christ said 'I 
thirst,' Brother or Sister, think of Him, and drink," 
and after refreshing yourselves, will doubtless puzzle 
over the letters and hieroglyphics on the face of the 
fount. To guard against stupid blunders, let me be 
their interpreter. It was the intention to commem- 
orate by initial or monogram a few names that are 
especially dear to the Glen. The pure-white marble 
keystone contains three : a star for Miss Eliza Allen 
Starr the authoress, A. de V. for Aubrey De Vere the 
poet, and father's familiar Greek "delta." Downward 
on the right will be found B., P., Z. and N., standing 
for Jas. Booth, Coventry Patmore, Val. Zimmerman 
and Mr. Nader; and down to the other side H., R., 
M. and O., signifying Joshua Hathaway, John Ruskin, 
Andrew Mullen and W. J. Onahan. Take another 
sip to offset the unavoidable dryness of my narration, 
and let us repair to the Glen. The sweet-briar that 
you pass at the mouth marks not "where a garden 
had been" but the site of Geo. Mearns' old log house, 
and the birthplace of the youngest of the family, the 
loved sister. So much has been said about the Glen's 
interior in the preceding papers, that I will omit any 
general description here. Your quick eyes have per- 
haps discovered a small Maltese cross cut in the first 
spur of the rocks on the right. If you have read 
father's "Dear Retreat" you will recognize it as the 
''Sacred symbol in the stone" of the poem. We cross 



POSTSCRIPT. 135 

the stream here on a few precarious stepping stones, 
but I notice that the young ladies and also the gentle- 
men like these crossings (there is another farther up) 
better than a bridge. The bed of the stream has 
widened and altered greatly of late, and sooner or 
later will claim the entire ground floor of the Glen 
as its own. Apropos, the considerate ( !) visitors 
(some of them) do not wait to be asked for their auto- 
graphs, but claim "wall space" for the same quite 
freely. The gray (or black) birch trunks are also 
'Sacred to the memor}^" of the IM's and N's. Horrid 
barbarians I 

Above the second crossing and near the boundary 
line, is the Weeping Ledge. Here one sees that the 
Glen is indeed 

"Filled with streams forever weeping. 
Through the rocks in mossy rills." 

and wonders that the fount never runs dry. The cor- 
roding action of the stream — unchecked it would 
seem by any ''pudding stone" — is undermining the 
ledge, and it is to be feared that it may disappear at 
no distant day. Now let us return to the more sunny 
open, and your lunch. 

Are you interested in grapes or wine? Perhaps 
father will show you the vineyard. It had its com- 
mencement in the little kitchen and flower garden at 
the Glen mouth, from some roots brought out from 
Milwaukee. The scribe has some personal knowledge 
of those first attempts to raise grapes, menaced as 
they were by birds, early frosts, and the perverse 
destructiveness of youth. On one occasion of a vine's 
first fruiting, a youngster (not to be named) armed 
Avith a lath and a cheerful disregard of consequences 
attacked the precious bunches ; and when he got 



136 ANNALS OF THE GLEN. 

through he annonnced to the distracted grape-raiser 
that there was "one berry left." Later on John, 
Charles and James made themselves a "grapery" 
apiece just back of where the tower now stands, and 
father planted out an arc-shaped bed on the edge of 
the bank bordering the marsh. Both are entirely 
obliterated now, and the vines are almost all on the 
face of the old "quarry hill," since rechristened "Wein- 
berg." Here they escape the mildew^ of the heavier 
soil, and are not cut off by the early frosts that fol- 
low the bed of the stream. Father announces thirty 
varieties, among them the Agawam, Golden Pock- 
lington, Jessica, Niagara, Vergennes, Duchess, Isra- 
eli a, Rebecca, Eumallan, and many more celebrities 
worthy and unworthy, as well as the old reliable 
standbys like the Concord, and the Delaware. Also 
the "Bertha," "Thecla" and "Louise," three seed- 
lings immortalizing Miss Patmore, Miss Durward 
and Miss Claude respectively. The vineyard con- 
tains between five and six hundred vines. 

Former visitors will look regrettingly at the spot 
once occupied by the apiary, and at the unused honey 
house, or mellidom as the classic scholar calls it. 
Perhaps some of the real old-timers may remember 
the inside of the now desolate and empty studio. 
"The years creep slowly by," or rather is it not 
quickly? It is well; leave the past — some of it — to 
the ghosts. 

The iow^-eaved cottage (a home production) is full 
of portraits and sketches, books and curios, and tne 
visitors will call there to get a cicerone for the near- 
at-hand stone structure, by some called the Tower, 
by others the Monastery, Picture Gallery, etc. It 
contains a cabinet of stuft'ed specimens of native 




THE ARTIST'S GRAVE. 



POSTSCRIPT. 137 

birds and beasts, and a library room, on the ground 
floor, and a collection of pictures, and some statuary, 
upstairs. Let us commence with the cabinet. Here 
the scribe would modestly plead guilty to being also 
the taxidermist. There are one hundred and twenty 
specim.ens, all captured in the state. The American 
ravens, white crane, grey foxes, porcupine, ana rac- 
coon are perhaps of the greatest interest. The foxes 
are genuine Scriptural foxes, they were caught with 
purpled tongues, among the vines. The library is 
yet only in its inception, and may be passed over. 
Mounting the stair to the upper floor, and getting 
the window — like Satan — behind you, a unique col- 
lection of family portraits in crayon (mentioned else- 
where) will be found covering the entire north wall. 
The two side walls are devoted to oil paintings by 
B. I. D., C. P. D., J. D., M. T. D., and H. Vianden. 
Lastly the chapel ma}' be visited, walking up the 
hill by a "wolken-steg," while the carriage goes round. 
It was built in 1866 and since then two of the family 
have said their first masses there, one has been mar- 
ried and one buried from it. The altarpiece is "Our 
Lady of Lourdes," taking the place of one painted 
for the church after Murillo, and at present in Bara- 
boo. Encircling the chapel and the cemetery are the 
St^ution Shrines, erected in 1889. The pictures are 
from, designs by Delaroche and others. Father John 
returning from Palestine that year brought a little soil 
from the site of the original Stations in the Via Dolo- 
rosa at Jerusalem, and this was incorporated in these, 
making this hill-top a veritable Holy Land. Is that 
llie roll of our carriage? Yes, I believe so; partings 
are all abrupt, here as elsewhere. Farewell. 



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